LearnTech Symposium 2025

Today marked the third annual Learning Technology Symposium—a chance for our team to come together and explore emerging technologies in the age of AI. This year we took a slightly different approach, with three teams of three people working collaboratively to build a content, utilizing NILE’s built-in AI design assistant (AIDA) and Copilot.

Course Building

As most of the team were involved in the university-wide Copilot pilot programme, we have access to Copilot embedded throughout the Microsoft Office suite of tools, and at time of writing, the AIDA tools are as follows:

• Course structure suggestions
• Discussion generation
• Journal generation
• Rubric generation
• Assignment prompt generation
• Test question generation
• Question Bank generation
• Insert or generate images
• AI Conversations
• Generate Document layouts

At UON, all instructors can access these and benefit from the time saved as they build their NILE courses.

Attendees of the symposium worked on building a fictitious training package, which can later be populated and potentially used as a self-serve training in line with the University’s 5-year strategy.

Gamification

As well as the role of the trainer designing a course, we had the opportunity to experience the role of the trainee by engaging in a fully gamified session.

In three groups of three people, the element of competition was introduced. One of the learning packages will be chosen as the winner, and teams reviewed and voted on each other’s. This helps encourage certain personality types to strive for excellence and stay engaged.

Game Mechanics & Progression were implemented via a game board and activity cards. Each team had one dice, one counter and two sets of cards with activities on. Participants used the dice and counter to advance along the path on the board, if they landed on a blue square they drew a blue card, a pink square a pink card, and purple square was a wildcard. This provides a structured and visual way to track progress. Creates randomisation and chance, and —if cards were face-down— the element of surprise. It also meant that people had some freedom to decide how long to spend on activities. And although cards were identical, different teams were likely to be working on different things at any given time.

For autonomy & personalization the wildcard element empowers participants by giving them freedom in choosing their own task. The wildcard tasks carried their own competitivity, with the chance to win, by showing creativity and skill with AI tools. The idea was for teams to choose a task using an AI with one person in the team of three showing the others something new. A winning entry would have viewers questioning, “How did you make that?”

Individuals also had the chance to play a Hidden Objects game, looking for certain items in an image. These were placed into Microsoft Whiteboard and we all had fun pointing out the hidden items with the laser pointer. The images had been created with AI and could be used as an icebreaker at the start of a session. For instant feedback (another important key in gamification) H5P’s multiple hotspot feature can make the image interactive.

Variety of Technology

The event was also a great opportunity to use and experience a selection of the different technologies we have available to us at the University of Northampton. In the running of the session, we used MS Loop; for instructions and help guides, MS Whiteboard for collaborative activities, anonymous voting and affinity diagram. PowerPoint for the running order, and MS Forms for the feedback survey.

For the activities we used NILE tools including Padlet, Copilot, and a couple of other AI tools, which people had log-ins for or didn’t require a log in.

Data and Digital

Time was also spent as a team reviewing the University of Northampton’s Digital and Data Strategy 2025–2029, which outlines a vision for transforming how we work, teach, and support students. It was a chance to reflect on the important and strategic role the Learning Technology team plays in helping achieve these goals by 2030. From embedding digital literacy and promoting continuous learning, to supporting automation, data governance, and personalised learning experiences, our work is directly aligned with the strategy’s focus areas. It was encouraging to see how the tools and approaches we explored during the symposium neatly contribute to building a digitally empowered, inclusive, and forward thinking university that we can be proud to work for.

Conclusion

The AI Symposium 2025 was a brilliant mix of creativity, collaboration, and curiosity. It gave us the chance to explore new tools, test out ideas, and experience learning from both the trainer and trainee perspective. Whether it was building courses with AIDA, experimenting with Copilot, rolling dice on a game board, or enjoying Kelly’s delicious home-baked brownies, the day was full of energy and innovation.

If any of this has sparked your interest please do reach out to your Learning Technologist. We’re always happy to chat, share resources, or help you get started.