Reflections from ICODL 2025: Curiosity, creativity, and GenAI in learning

ICODL 2025, organized by the Hellenic Open University and held in Patra, Greece, explored the theme of ‘Open and Distance Education: 21st Century Skills and the Challenge of Artificial Intelligence’.

This conference was a vibrant gathering of educators, researchers, and doctoral students committed to shaping the future of open and distance education. The atmosphere was electric with ideas, values-driven dialogue, and a shared passion for innovation.

The conference theme ‘Open and Distance Education: 21st Century Skills and the Challenge of Artificial Intelligence’ was timely. With a range of keynote contributions and over 110 peer-reviewed presentations, the event offered a rich tapestry of perspectives on openness, accessibility, and the transformative potential of AI in education. Round tables and experiential workshops created spaces for deep engagement, while cultural highlights, including a performance by the Music School, reminded attendees of the human dimension at the heart of learning.

A keynote speech, presented by Professor Chrissi Nerantzi, titled ‘What if students are genuinely using GenAI to learn?’ invited participants to move beyond narratives of mistrust and policing toward a more open, transparent, and responsible approach to generative AI. Drawing on collaborative projects with the #creativeHE community and early findings from research conducted at the University of Leeds, Chrissi shared how students are engaging critically and imaginatively with AI, using it, not as a shortcut, but as a tool for exploration, criticality and creativity. Attendees were invited to discuss the big question of assessment: if AI can do it, what is the point?

Chrissi Nerantzi also presented alongside School of Education Postgraduate researcher Zachary Farouk Chai, and MA Digital Education students Maria Pavlopoulou and Alexandra Poradowska, about the module ‘Education in a Digital Society’ which they had re-imagined together. Their approach adopted an AI-enabled curriculum that places human collaboration, authentic learning, and experimentation at its heart. The title of this session was ‘Reimagining a Postgraduate Module: Injecting Problem-Based Learning and Normalising the Use of GenAI for Learning’.

I am so proud of our students who embraced this work and demonstrated how they have grown as educators and innovators.

Chrissi Nerantzi also had the privilege of presenting with colleagues who she had previously met at the EDEN 2025 conference on their collaborative project ‘People, Places and Pasta or Uncreative Explorations as Collective Intelligence’. This playful yet deeply reflective initiative emerged from shared experiences at EDEN, where they synthesized individual and collective notes into creative outputs – a poem, a recipe, a Socratic dialogue, and visual metaphors – supported by AI. The session, titled ‘Collective Intelligence through Multimodal Pedagogy: Lessons from Human-GenAI Co-Creation in Open and Distance Education’, showcased how human creativity and generative AI can intersect to produce rich, multimodal learning artifacts. It was an inspiring example of how collaboration and experimentation can lead to new pedagogical possibilities and how these could become testbeds for ideas that could be adapted and implemented across disciplines and practices to enable and nurture collective critical and creative reflection supported by AI.

Many thanks are given to co-presenters Dr Maria D. Avgerinou, Dr Maria-Eleftheria Galani, Dr Irene Karayianni, and Professor Panos Vlachopoulos for bringing this vision to life.

This conference brought together a wide diversity of contributions, from emerging doctoral research to established practices and the generosity of the conversations.

Thank you to Dr Gelly Manousou, Professor Manolis Koutouzis, and the entire organising and technical team for creating such a well-supported and inspiring event and your warmth and hospitality. It was a joy to connect with colleagues, exchange ideas, and reflect on how curiosity and imagination can flourish, in times of uncertainty.

It is hoped that the conversations, which began as a result of this conference, will be continued and that we can move towards building learning environments where humans and machines collaborate creatively for the benefit of all. The Imaginative Curriculum Research and Scholarship Centre, which Professor Chrissi Nerantzi, in collaboration with School of Earth and Environment, School of Design and the School of Politics and International Studies, is launching in the School of Education will provide a valuable hub for this.

Sign up here to keep informed on updates through the development of this centre.

Attendees watching the band play at ICODL 2025