What Happens When an AI Becomes a Participant in the Session?

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What Happens When an AI Becomes a Participant in the Session?

As virtual learning becomes a permanent part of education, institutions continue to face a fundamental challenge: how to provide personalized, responsive support to diverse learners at scale. This presentation introduces the AI Participant, an emerging framework within the BigBlueButton virtual classroom platform that explores how artificial intelligence can enhance, rather than replace, the human teaching experience.

This session will examine four proposed AI-assisted roles, a Tutor, Peer, Copilot, and Support Agent, each designed to address specific challenges of synchronous online learning, including learner engagement, instructor cognitive load, accessibility, and real-time academic support. Drawing on research from personalized learning, intelligent tutoring systems, cognitive science, and online education, the presentation will discuss both the opportunities and limitations of AI participation in live classrooms.

Importantly, this is not a product showcase. The AI Participant is currently under active development, and many of its proposed capabilities remain subjects for research and evaluation. Jesus's presentation will therefore focus on the design rationale, ethical considerations, governance requirements, and research agenda needed to responsibly introduce AI into teaching and learning environments. Session attendees will gain insight into how educational institutions can approach AI innovation with transparency, evidence, and a commitment to keeping teachers at the center of the learning experience.

Audience: Educational leaders, instructional designers, researchers, learning technologists, and faculty interested in the future of AI-enhanced teaching and learning.

About Jesus Federico

Jesus Federico is an accomplished IT professional with over 30 years of experience spanning IT Project Management, Software Development, and Infrastructure Administration. He holds a bachelor's degree in Computer Science and a master's degree in E-Commerce.

Currently, Jesus serves as the Director of Products and Services at Blindside Networks, where he has been a key contributor for over a decade. Throughout his career, he has led the development of integrations for the BigBlueButton project with major learning platforms such as Moodle, Sakai, and Canvas. His work includes authoring the BigBlueButton Moodle plugin (merged into Moodle core in 2021), as well as the RecordRTC plugin for audio and video recording (merged into Moodle's Atto editor in 2015). He is proficient in Java, Ruby, JavaScript, PHP, Python, C/C++, and Go, with professional experience also extending to earlier technologies such as COBOL. His expertise spans MVC frameworks such as Spring Boot, Ruby on Rails, Django, and Grails.

In parallel, Jesus serves as a facilitator and course creator for higher education programs, with a strong interest in developing effective online learning experiences. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he played a pivotal role in helping educational institutions worldwide scale and manage large deployments of web applications and video conferencing systems, applying modern DevOps practices to ensure resilience and performance at scale. Building on this foundation, he is now engaged in applied research in artificial intelligence, with a particular focus on AI-driven innovations in education.