New digital laboratories of experimental knowledge production: Artificial intelligence and education research

• Main Author: Ben James Williamson
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: UCL Press 2020-06-01
• Series: London Review of Education
• Online Access: https://ucl.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14324/LRE.18.2.05

Education data scientists, learning engineers and precision education specialists are new experts in knowledge production in educational research. By bringing together data science methodologies and advanced artificial intelligence (AI) systems with disciplinary expertise from the psychological, biological and brain sciences, they are building a new field of AI-based learning science. This article presents an examination of how education research is being remade as an experimental data-intensive science. AI is combining with learning science in new ‘digital laboratories’ where ownership over data, and power and authority over educational knowledge production, are being redistributed to research assemblages of computational machines and scientific expertise.