Alumni Weekend Panel Explores AI’s Growing Role in Education

Every year at Alumni Weekend, Penn GSE welcomes graduates back to campus to reconnect with one another and engage in conversations around some of the most pressing issues facing education today. This year’s featured panel, “AI in Education: What Parents, Teachers, and Schools Need to Know,” brought together faculty and alumni to examine how artificial intelligence is already transforming teaching and learning, while also raising questions around trust, equity, ethics, and the future of schools.

Held in a packed auditorium in Stiteler Hall as part of the University’s Alumni Weekend, the discussion featured Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Affairs and Graduate School of Education Presidential Professor Susan Yoon as moderator alongside panelists Associate Professor Bodong Chen, Associate Professor Seiji Isotani, and Liz Radday, GRD’10, director of innovation and research at EdAdvance. 

Dean Katharine Strunk opened the conversation by framing AI not simply as a technological challenge, but as a profoundly human one.

“Trust is at the heart of the question we have gathered here today to discuss,” said Dean Strunk. “We are, after all, asking schools, teachers, parents, and students to make a consequential decision about technologies that are complex, powerful, and rapidly changing.”

Strunk reflected on the issue both as dean of Penn GSE and as a parent.

“I am not an AI researcher,” she said. “I’m a dean, and I’m a parent of two 14-year-old boys. And from each of those vantage points, the same questions keep surfacing for me: what does it actually look like to bring AI into education in ways that strengthen the deeply human work at the heart of teaching and learning, rather than steadily erode it?”

Throughout the panel, speakers emphasized that AI in education cannot be understood as a single tool or platform. Instead, they argued, it reflects broader decisions about what societies value in education and what kinds of learning schools hope to cultivate.

“Whenever we start discussing AI in education, and how it is transforming the landscape within and outside the U.S., it’s essential to realize that we have different visions about education,” said Isotani. “The differences in our visions and perceptions determine how we deal with AI.”

Drawing on examples from international education systems, Isotani discussed how countries, such as South Korea, have developed coordinated national AI strategies that integrate policymakers, educators, researchers, and technology companies into a shared educational vision.

“A joint understanding of education around the board can help create an ecosystem of how AI is implemented in a society,” he said. “If everyone is on the same page about AI, we can actually start thinking about the best way to implement it in education.”

Chen encouraged the audience to think about AI less as a singular technology and more as an evolving collection of tools shaped by human choices and values.

“AI is not one thing,” Chen said. “It is really a diverse set of different things.”

Using the metaphor of decorating a Christmas tree, he described AI as a collection of possibilities that educators and designers must intentionally shape.

“The question that we should ask is in which ways the elements of AI can become beautiful on that Christmas tree,” he said. “This is up to the human designers. And for education, of course, the question becomes how the AI design can reflect our vision and values.”

The panel also explored the opportunities and risks AI presents for K–12 students and teachers. Radday, whose work focuses on innovation and educational technology implementation, discussed the ways AI can expand what students are capable of creating and problem-solving, even without advanced technical backgrounds.

“The extension of what a student can do now, using AI, is incredible,” Radday said. “The risks are many, but student safety is one of my biggest concerns.”

She pointed specifically to concerns around deepfakes, bias in training data, and unequal access to AI literacy.

“There is also an equity gap,” Radday said. “Who’s learning how to use AI and who isn’t?”

At the same time, panelists emphasized that educators are already responding to these challenges in different ways. Some schools are focused primarily on AI detection and restriction, while others are exploring collaborative and creative uses of AI within classroom instruction.

“Educators’ perspective on the use of AI is on a spectrum,” Radday said. “On one end, you have those working on ways to detect AI in students’ work and penalize them. On the other hand, you have teachers and students working together and using AI in their collaborative projects.”

Following the panel, alumni, students, faculty, and guests gathered for a reception before reconvening for the 2026 Education Alumni Awards Ceremony, which honored members of the Penn GSE alumni community for their contributions to education, leadership, and public impact during the annual Alumni Weekend celebration.

View a gallery of photos from the Celebration of Educators event in our Public Photos portal.

Watch the full panel discussion:

Photos by HKB Photo