Humour is as important to our individual psychological balance as it is to our social balance. The classroom being a microcosm of society, and the fact that we spend a good part of our lives there, it seems essential that this form of humour has a place there and that we take more interest in its effects.

As an important method to develop active learning, gamification is increasingly used in education. It makes learning more fun and, therefore, less dry, and at the same time, it makes use of the benefits of games for learning. While games are essential for the development of children, we also know that they have educational benefits for adults. It allows them to develop their own values and attitudes, such as openness to new experiences, curiosity, risk-taking and the ability to learn from failure.

Scientists have recently mapped the journey of a thought through the brain, and the craze for anything related to neuroscience continues to grow. Like many “fashionable” trends, it has been the subject of some drifts, with the prefix “neuro” being misused multiple times for marketing purposes. In education, however, the young discipline of neuroeducation is becoming increasingly important.

While there are several valid teaching methods, the latest discoveries in neuroscience have identified four factors necessary for successful learning. Compatible with the freedom and experimentation that remain important in pedagogy, these guiding factors can be integrated into various learning approaches.

You’re alone in front of your computer, in the middle of an online learning session, and it doesn’t involve any human interaction, either with a teacher or with other learners. Are you likely to interact with your computer as if you were social partners, as you would with your peers in a traditional classroom? In light of the latest findings in social and emotional neuroscience, it seems quite plausible.

This guideline refers to the What of learning as it relates to the recognition networks — specialized networks to sense and assign meaning to patterns we see — that influence people’s ways of learning. For this guideline to be applied effectively, educators must focus on presenting materials to students in diverse formats. The end goal of this principle is to have students that are resourceful and knowledgeable. For this, educators must focus on a number of aspects.

This guideline refers to the ‘Why’ of learning as it relates to the affective networks that touch upon ‘individuals’ interest and motivation to learn something new. For this guideline to be applied effectively, educators need to foster a learning environment where students are adequately challenged and motivated to learn.

It is essential to emphasize that accessible education is not a matter that concerns only a small population, as some people might have been led to believe. Instead, accessible instruction could benefit all students with and without disabilities. The Center for Applied Special Technology (2018) defines UDL as “an approach to teaching aimed at meeting the needs of every student in a classroom.” They also argue that UDL “is a framework to improve and optimize teaching and learning for all people based on scientific insights into how humans learn.”

We are all quite familiar with the phenomenon of optical illusions but less so with the phenomenon of cognitive biases. However, these perceptual distortions that are to our mind what optical illusions are to our visual system lead us to make wrong judgments or bad decisions daily. These mental shortcuts that allow the brain to simplify information processing are inevitable, but we can learn to detect them better, starting with a better knowledge of them.

Many of the judgments we make daily, although they may seem sensible to us, are, in fact, far from rational and can lead us to make bad decisions. These erroneous judgments are called cognitive biases, and some 250 different ones are known to date. While the teaching profession encourages the development of critical thinking skills, the learner-teacher relationship is nevertheless conducive to the development of some of these biases, and they can have a significant impact on learning. The Pygmalion effect is one of them, and the first step in preventing it is to know more about it.

Cognitive bias is a form of thinking that appears to be erroneously based on logical and rational reasoning, leading to incorrect analysis and judgments. These shortcuts of the mind are mostly unconscious and systematic. Thus, although we can act on them after the fact, we cannot prevent the brain from producing them. The best way to counteract them is first to be aware that they exist, then to know how our three systems of thought work, and finally, as developmental psychology researcher and neuroscientist Olivier Houdé argues, to develop our “cognitive resistance” or “learning to think against ourselves”.

AI helps computers perform tasks that typically require human intelligence, like understanding language, recognizing objects in images, playing games, using patterns and trends within vast amounts of data to make predictions, and much more. To strip it down to its main stages, AI is like making a cake: you gather ingredients, follow a recipe, mix things together, bake it, and then you watch the results unfold.

ChatGPT is undoubtedly the best-known generative artificial intelligence (AI) tool, but it’s far from the only one… The number of applications powered by this form of AI and accessible to the general public continues to multiply. Using algorithms and big data, this type of AI can generate original content – be it text, image, audio or video – in response to user requests. As these applications evolve rapidly, they tend to become increasingly multimodal, in other words, to generate more than one type of content. To better understand them, it’s helpful to know the different categories under which the technologies underpinning them can be classified. Although there are many types of terminology, we’d like to suggest ten categories.

Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Internet of Things… the fourth Industrial Revolution is well underway, and with it, the promise of technological advancements. However, all these come paired with a few concerns, including the fear of seeing robots taking over our jobs. Should we start to worry?

As part of their training, future teachers are sent out to schools to put into practice what they are learning and work side-by-side with a seeded teacher… who will observe the student-teacher, evaluate their performance and provide feedback to help them hone their craft. […] this experience takes place in a real classroom, with real students, it can easily become daunting, socially awkward, and very challenging. In this context and working closely with a team from Concordia’s Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) unit from the Department of Education, we created a VR experience where students can prepare, in a safe and customized virtual environment, for their assessment interview with their mentor (either classroom teacher or university supervisor).

Initially associated with the world of video games, virtual reality (VR) is becoming an essential training tool in specific fields, including medicine and paramedicine. Its advantages are enhanced by the fact that it has evolved rapidly in recent years in terms of performance and ergonomics while becoming more accessible. To respect the ethical principle of “never the first time on the patient,” simulation in its various forms has been an integral part of the training of healthcare professionals in North America for several decades.

Amid the excitement and concerns surrounding AI, eConcordia is committed to ensuring that technology serves educators and students, not the other way around. Driven by this philosophy, they set out to better understand AI's potential for enhancing learning. In 2021, the team began exploring OpenAI's GPT-3, focusing on how its conversational abilities could increase student engagement. Combining their expertise in VR, they launched the VRAI Project, leading to A Conversation with Newton—a VR experience that lets users step into Isaac Newton’s study for unscripted, interactive discussions on his life and work.