We’re all tired of scrambling to keep up with the rapidly changing world. Join this workshop to gain hands-on experience with strategic foresight tools that help you anticipate, plan for, and adapt to change. Activities will be grounded in our goal to engage in GenAI-powered research that is ethical, efficient, and effective.

This workshop provides attendees with skills in two areas: 1) using strategic foresight for research, and 2) generating an action plan for adopting GenAI research tools. Strategic foresight is a research method for using data about the present to anticipate potential futures. Anticipating potential futures prepares us to intentionally leverage opportunities and mitigate pitfalls, making us active participants in creating the future we want to see. In recent years, with the global pandemic and meteoric rise of AI, education professionals have dealt with a sustained period of drastic change. More than ever, our profession needs to be able to create data-informed scenarios for potential futures, detailed descriptions of the future we want to see come to pass, and realistic action plans for attaining our preferred future. In this workshop, we will use proven tools from strategic foresight researchers to focus on the future of GenAI-powered research.

This is a highly interactive workshop. First, the presenters will introduce strategic foresight, defining key terms and principles, showing attendees examples of education-related strategic foresight research outputs, and answering questions. Next, attendees will engage in an interactive activity that serves to both orient attendees to a futures mindset and also introduce themselves to each other. For the rest of the workshop, attendees will work in small groups to gain hands-on experience with real strategic foresight tools. Both digital and hard copies of the tools will be provided so that attendees can bring them back to their teams and apply what they learned to their daily work.

All of the exercises we practice in the workshop will focus on the topic “GenAI-powered research in 2030.” It is important to note that strategic foresight can be used for any topic, so attendees will leave the workshop with a new set of skills they can apply to almost any aspect of their work. Of course, it’s best to learn a new skill by applying it to real-world problems, and we know that GenAI is top of mind for many of us today. In the workshop, each activity will help attendees work toward a final product - an action plan for themselves as individuals (and their teams at work, if applicable) to be purposeful in their investigation and adoption of GenAI research tools.