AI in education
How Fontys teaches IT students to choose between AI models
How can AI best be utilised in education? At Fontys, Koen Suilen is one of the people leading the way on this, starting with the IT programme. SURF AI plays a key role within their AI ecosystem. Not only as a responsible alternative, but also because it is surprisingly fast.
Key facts
Who: Koen Suilen
Role: member of the AI Task Force and curriculum lead for AI & Data
Organisation: Fontys
Service: SURF AI
Challenge: teaching students to make informed choices in the field of AI
Solution: an ‘AI ecosystem’ with multiple providers; students must justify why they choose a particular model for their use case.
For Koen Suilen, the arrival of ChatGPT marked a turning point in his professional life. “At the time, I was a lecturer, but now I’m working full-time on the role of AI in our education. AI is everywhere. It’s like an oil slick, or a Barbapapa that fits anywhere. A supportive and formative tool in all your work.”
Koen Suilen
To ensure this is managed effectively, a small team from Fontys ICT has spent the last two years setting up an ‘AI ecosystem’ for students: they can use various providers of AI language models free of charge. Why this freedom of choice? Koen explains: “We wanted to avoid tying up our budget with a single supplier. It’s a matter of autonomy, but also of spreading the risks.”
Making a conscious choice to use AI
“More importantly, we want to teach our students to make informed choices about the use of AI. Let them explain exactly what they want, at what cost, and why they need that particular AI model.” Every use case has different requirements and needs a different suitable model, for example when working with sensitive data.
The final, but by no means least important, reason for setting up our own AI ecosystem for students was equality of opportunity. After all, there is always a threat of shadow IT. “A student who receives a lot of money from their parents or through a part-time job could independently take out pro subscriptions to the most powerful AI models and thereby gain an unfair advantage. We wanted to prevent that by offering the widest possible range of options to all students.”
“We want to teach our students to make informed choices when it comes to AI”
SURF AI: data stays within the country
Fontys ICT offers AI models from various suppliers: currently Azure, SURF and GreenPT, a Dutch start-up that specialises in green AI. “This means we have a range of options available.”
SURF AI has several strengths. “It’s valuable to us because it’s a genuinely responsible alternative, and fundamentally not just a stripped-down commercial provider of AI models. Firstly, you know that nothing comes from outside the country’s borders when you use the open-source models, as these run primarily within SURF’s data centres. You can also see exactly how things stand in terms of speed, data and energy consumption. As a user, you can learn to manage these aspects consciously.”
“SURF AI is valuable to us because it really is a responsible alternative”
An unexpected advantage is that, in practice, it seems to work quickly: “You get a response to your prompt sooner than with some commercial providers. That makes it interesting for our researchers too, alongside the guarantee that everything stays in the Netherlands.”
For policymakers like Koen, SURF’s accessibility is also a major plus. He says: “Let’s be honest, as a university of applied sciences, you don’t exactly find yourself in conversation with Microsoft or Amazon about the model catalogue or anything else very quickly.”
Finally, Koen praises the community spirit surrounding SURF AI: “We’ve held several meetings with other institutions to learn from one another: what educational or teaching applications are being used with SURF AI? We have good links with a number of other universities of applied sciences and universities in the Netherlands. Together, we can exchange ideas on further development and test them in various contexts. As far as I’m concerned, that’s just as valuable as SURF AI’s technical support.”
“With our AI offering, we’re creating equal opportunities”
Playtime for decision makers
What has Fontys ICT learnt about setting up an AI ecosystem? Firstly, that you need to think carefully about the choices you make. Koen explains: “You really need a broad range of knowledge and experience, because everyone only holds a piece of the puzzle. Information security officers, for example, can block access to suppliers X and Y. Legal experts can analyse what responsibility you, as an institution, assume when you provide services to your students yourself.”
Koen has found that meaningful discussions between all these experts aren’t that easy. “AI means something different to everyone. Technical people immediately start talking about AI models, APIs, and so on. Educationalists think more in terms of the relational and pedagogical aspects. Policy makers, in turn, have yet another framework. As a result, they don’t understand each other’s terminology.”
“Within the SURF AI community, we can exchange ideas with other institutions and test them in a variety of contexts”
“And they all tend to overlook ‘shadow AI’. After all, you can run an AI model on your laptop or quickly check ChatGPT on your phone during a coffee break.”
Koen therefore emphasises that anyone who needs to have a say on AI must be familiar with it themselves. “People need to be given time to get to know it. You need to know from your own experience what it is and how fast developments are moving. AI demands a high degree of agility and curiosity from your organisation.”
Text: Aad van de Wijngaart
Photos: Jelmer de Haas