From 17 to 19 April 2026, Prof Ben Leong, Director of the AI Centre for Educational Technologies (AICET), and Dr Liu Liu, Research Fellow of AICET, visited Tsinghua University in Beijing for a series of activities on AI-empowered education. The visit included an invited presentation and roundtable panel at the international conference “Future Education and Learning in the Age of AI” (人工智能时代的未来教育与学习), co-organised by the Tsinghua School of Education and The Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK); a study visit to XuetangX (学堂在线); a seminar on programming language courses hosted by the Tsinghua Office of Academic Affairs and the Center for Faculty Development; and in-depth research discussions with the Tsinghua School of Education, AICET’s MOU partner.
At the conference, Prof Ben delivered a presentation titled “Doing Better, Not Just Faster: What AI Makes Possible in Teaching and Learning”, sharing AICET’s perspective on pedagogy-first innovation in AI-assisted learning. He argued that the starting point for educational AI must be a clearly defined pedagogical problem, not the technology itself. Drawing on AICET’s work at NUS, he pointed to roleplay-based AI simulations developed for social work, nursing, and law students as an example of AI making possible what teachers cannot scale on their own, rather than simply accelerating tasks they already perform. He emphasised that AI should extend the professional judgment at the heart of good teaching, not displace it. The pedagogical guardrails universities put in place today, he concluded, will determine whether AI deepens student learning or merely accelerates it.
Prof Ben also joined the conference roundtable “AI+Edu in the Wild” (教育实践与行业圆桌论坛), chaired by Dr Jifan Yu of Tsinghua University, with fellow panelists drawn from Tsinghua, EdUHK, and industry. The panel brought together academic and industry perspectives on the realities of deploying AI in education at scale, with discussion spanning implementation challenges, student assessment in AI-mediated learning, and the practical lessons emerging across different institutional contexts.
The productive discussions in Beijing reaffirm that the path forward for AI in education lies in collective learning and rigorous pedagogical inquiry. AICET is proud to contribute to this global dialogue and remains committed to exploring new frontiers in AI-enhanced education with our partners at Tsinghua University.