Location: Nueces B (The Commons)

Description: Generative Artificial intelligence (AI) and Large Language Models (LLMs) have become increasingly hot topics in education in recent years. Importantly, these technologies offer exciting possibilities for enhancing existing approaches within Learning Analytics. One of the key applications of LLMs is Natural Language Processing (NLP), and for good reason: they offer consistently high accuracies compared to previous methods and can be efficiently fine-tuned to perform well on many different tasks.

Activities:

In this workshop, we will show how LLMs can be used for NLP tasks within the field of Learning Analytics. After a brief general introduction to LLMs, participants will engage in a series of hands-on exercises in using and training LLMs, both in Python and with graphical tools. At the end of the workshop, the participants will have the opportunity to try using these models with their own data.

Intended Audience: While prior experience with Python is certainly beneficial, it is not required to participate in this workshop. We will provide an overview of using LLMs with both graphical tools and also using Python APIs.

Preparation: Participants should bring a laptop with internet connectivity for the hands-on activities. If participants have their own language data and tasks to perform on that data, they are encouraged to bring a copy of the data to work on. Sample datasets will be provided for participants who do not bring their own.

Workshop Leaders: Vitomir Kovanović, UniSA Education Futures, Srecko Joksimovic, UniSA, Henry Anderson, UTA, Elizabeth Powers, UTA