Learning to Plan in a World of Trade-Offs: Stakeholder Interviews and Professional Skills Through AI-Enhanced Role-Play
Abstract:
Teaching students to navigate complex sustainability challenges requires learning designs that expose them to competing interests and real-world trade-offs. This interactive workshop presents an AI-enhanced, learner-centered teaching approach developed in the master’s course Marine Planning (SVF-3555) at UiT, the Arctic University of Norway. The approach builds on a role-play simulation in which students negotiate a marine spatial plan under ecological, economic, and social pressures. By integrating customized AI stakeholder chatbots, the learning design shifts students from performing stakeholder roles to acting as researchers conducting stakeholder interviews, positioning them as active knowledge producers while developing skills relevant for their future professional practice. Participants in this workshop will experience how AI-supported stakeholder interviews can increase engagement and perceived realism while strengthening interview skills, analytical capacity, and AI literacy. The workshop concludes with reflection on pedagogical design choices, ethical considerations, and practical challenges, and invites discussion on how AI-mediated role-play can support sustainability-oriented learning in higher education.
Requirements for potential participants: open to all.
Expected outcomes:
Participants will gain insight into how AI-enhanced role-play can support learner-centered and sustainability-oriented education by shifting students from passive recipients of knowledge to active producers of knowledge. Through hands-on interaction with AI stakeholder chatbots, participants will experience how AI-mediated role-play can simulate complex stakeholder environments while helping students develop professional skills, analytical capacity, and AI literacy.
Maximum number of participants: max. 30-40 (10 groups, with 3-4 in each group)
Any additional information you consider relevant: at least one member of each group must have a PC/Mac for doing the stakeholder interviews using the chatbot.
Workshop facilitators: Signe Annie Sønvisen and Jarl Gunnar Taxerås Flaten, The Artic University of Norway, UiT
