With more than 11.000 registered participants—nearly 80% of the province's teachers and administrators—the proposal of the Universidad Austral It had to be divided into two editions. The first is closing with a retention rate of 90,4% and is already presenting projects in the classroom.
The School of Education of the Universidad Austral The second cohort of the Diploma in Artificial Intelligence for Teaching and Innovation in the Classroom began this Thursday, July 23, in the Malvinas Argentinas Hall of the Government House of San Luis. It includes more than 6.000 teachers, administrators, and final-year students from teacher training institutes throughout the province.
The existence of two cohorts is a direct result of the overwhelming response: more than 11.000 teachers and administrators enrolled, representing nearly 80% of the province's teaching staff—a figure that necessitated splitting the course. Those beginning now pre-registered in March and waited their turn. "This second cohort is eagerly awaiting the start of the course," stated Governor Claudio Poggi, who is also enrolled in the Diploma program. At the same opening event, he announced that a third registration period will open at the end of February, with the goal of enabling 100% of San Luis' teachers and administrators to participate in the training.
The meeting was attended by Governor Poggi; the provincial Minister of Education, Guillermo Araujo; and the Dean of the School of Education of the Universidad AustralDr. Santiago Bellomo; and the executive coordinator of the Diploma program, Ms. Alejandra Vatrano. The first class was taught in person to 220 teachers, administrators, and students from teacher training institutes, and simultaneously to the other participants who followed the class virtually from different parts of San Luis.
The 5.000 teachers and administrators in the first cohort have already completed the intensive phase and are currently presenting their projects and evidence of classroom implementation. This experience yielded remarkable results for a massive online training program: a 90,4% retention rate, 97,2% "very good" ratings for the synchronous sessions, over 92% positive feedback on its usefulness for teaching practice, and over 85% usage of the virtual campus. Those starting now are also participating concurrently with this cohort, which is currently in its final stage.
The program's starting point is not a technological certainty but an open question. “Artificial intelligence has us quite perplexed. Universities and professors are not so used to not having answers to the problems we face,” Bellomo stated to the participants. “Practices we thought were proven, that worked well, are now being questioned. It's a technology that's entering the classroom the way cell phones did, without us having any guidelines on how to adopt it.”
He cautioned that these formulas don't yet exist for anyone: the field is too new. Hence the guiding principle of the proposal: "This isn't a diploma program to provide formulas, it's a diploma program to understand what's happening." The Governor himself described this condition from a management perspective, noting that AI is advancing every month and that some issues from the first cohort will need to be addressed in the second.
Understanding, in this case, has an immediate practical application. Each participant works on their own lesson plans, generates resources for their classes, designs assessment tools, and concludes the program with a project implemented in their classroom. The program doesn't offer a single manual; instead, it builds the criteria for each teacher to decide how to use artificial intelligence in their own context.
The Diploma program is organized under the Challenge-Based Learning (CBL) modality: each student must complete four challenges or practical challenges. The journey progresses from understanding what generative artificial intelligence is and how it works, to exploring its pedagogical uses, examining the problems it poses, and finally, applying it in concrete projects situated within the classroom. The choice of model responds to an explicit criterion: that the teacher decides when and how the tool is useful in their context, and that they work on real classroom problems from a pedagogical perspective.
One of these problems is the one that most challenges daily practice. “How do we assess when on the other side there are students using AI and we don’t know how? And how do we leverage AI to generate good rubrics, good assessment tools, and even to provide feedback?” Bellomo asked.
The support provided is what explains these numbers, and it's designed to work at scale. In addition to plenary sessions, groups of up to 40 people are formed with a professional in charge, within a tiered tutoring system. "Maintaining a 90,4% retention rate in a program with more than 5.000 teachers is not a matter of chance, but rather the result of a very close support model," explained the Diploma Coordinator, Alejandra Vatrano. The program is organized with lead tutors and facilitator tutors in an agile management structure: "Behind each student is a tutor who knows their progress, quickly detects when someone stops participating, and communicates personally to help them reorganize, resolve difficulties, or find a strategy to continue." "More than answering questions, our tutoring team guides students' journeys," she summarized.
The entire process culminates in a concrete product from each participant. “It ends with a project that must be implemented in the classroom,” Bellomo pointed out. “And therein lies perhaps one of the most valuable aspects: creating a repository of real-world experiences applying AI in classrooms, on a very large scale, to document, research, and inform educational policies based on the collected experience.”
The choice of a university, rather than a technology provider, was deliberate. “After analyzing several proposals for artificial intelligence training, we started with the Universidad Austral “Because we were clear that we needed people who were specialists in education and who also knew about artificial intelligence,” explained Minister Araujo. The other initial requirement was that the knowledge gained be applied in the classroom through concrete projects.
The repository generated from these productions also has a territorial function: “It allows teachers in the north of the province to take advantage of resources generated by teachers in the south, enrich them and adapt them to the context of their school and their locality,” he explained, and summarized: “If there is anything more powerful than artificial intelligence, it is shared intelligence.”
The Diploma program is free, online, includes practical components and offers professional development credit for teachers, and is aimed at educators at all levels—Early Childhood, Primary, Secondary, Youth and Adult Education, and Teacher Training—as well as students in their final year of teacher training institutes. This second cohort will conclude in December. The program is part of the “Classroom: Innovation in the Classroom” initiative, based on an agreement between the Universidad Austral and the University of La Punta, with the support of the Government of the Province of San Luis.
