Christina Munk: How Danish Schools Embrace AI

Kyle James (00:01.033) Hey, welcome to the AI Chronicles podcast. I'm your host, Kyle James. And today we're going to be diving in headfirst into how a vocational education and training school in Denmark called Cold College is using AI inside of their own organization. And we'll share the exact steps that you can take in order to implement AI for yourself. Now, before I dive into that, listen closely. Are you looking to implement AI inside of your own organization or just struggling to get the AI to stop hallucinating? Speak to GPT Trainer. GPT trainer literally builds out and manages your AI agent for you, eliminating hallucinations for good. Go to gpt-trainer.com. I promise you, it'll be the biggest time saving decision that you've made all year. Trying to set up AI on your own is like trying to build a house from scratch. Sure, you could do it, but the time and frustration is going to take you to get finished just isn't worth it. It's a thousand times faster and safer to hire professionals. Christina Munk (00:41.742) and I'm saying this is an issue. Kyle James (00:57.501) Scheduled consultation today. Once again, that's gpt-trainer.com. Today I have with me Christina Monk, is the head of education at Cole college. Super excited to have Christina on today. Hey, welcome to the show, Christina. Christina Munk (01:11.278) Thank you. Kyle James (01:12.827) Awesome. So tell me a little bit about yourself and like, how did you end up at cold college? Christina Munk (01:18.36) Well, I'm the head of the dairy education at college and I have a background educated as a dairy engineer. And then I didn't go to work at a dairy when I got my degree. So I went with Carlsberg because, well, everyone likes beer. So I wanted to explore that. Working there for a lot of years, getting a lot of production experience. Then I went into technical sales. Kyle James (01:35.995) Yeah. Christina Munk (01:44.13) with different companies selling equipment. I always found equipment very interesting. I especially had an interest in filtration equipment and worked a lot with that for several years. And then at some point I ended up at college because they were looking for a teacher who could teach equipment and how equipment works to the students. And that's how I ended up there. And then after a few years of being a teacher, I'm now head of the theory education. Kyle James (02:13.993) Wow. That's impressive. mean, to make your way up the ladder towards the head of education, that's a big deal. Especially, you know, coming from your background, that's amazing. And I know that from what we've talked about earlier is like you, you're using AI to some degree at Cole college. Love what you're doing. Tell me a little bit more about that though. Like what, what did, what made you decide to say, Hey, let's start using AI in the first place. And what exactly were the types of challenges you were trying to solve with it? Christina Munk (02:43.992) Well, I think as a lot of other schools that we we experienced it with it a little bit in the beginning when it came up and had some different like chats and stuff with it. And then we were trying to find out how we should work with it. And then we had like this was a message from the education system in Denmark that we should start using the AI also in our teaching and in our preparation. And we are doing that, our teachers have access to AI and they're using that in their preparation for when they are teaching students and are using that as a partner for them. And our students are also using it sometimes for different tasks. They also can get assignments in the class and then they are asked to use AI as their partner in solving a problem. We sometimes find that The AIs are not that specific when it comes to very technical dairy questions. They are not trained enough for that background, but you can still, if you're good at prompting, actually find quite good answers with the generative systems that we call. Kyle James (03:54.771) Right, right. as far as like for, cause I mean, you know, teachers have their role and then obviously students have theirs. Like where do you, maybe starting with teachers first, like what are they using it mostly for and like what types of like benefits are they getting from using the AI, within the, within the school system? Christina Munk (04:13.88) think it's different. think for once you use it as a quick search engine to find a question to answers where you before had to go and find a book and look up and read a lot. You can find answers and you can build on the answers and go in different directions. So have that as a way of finding information that you want to teach about diving into new areas. can also just be simple fact finding. They can also be like using it as a way of doing preparations. For instance, if I have a topic that I want to teach the students and I have 60 minutes to do it and I have a subject, how can I present this to the students? They need to have an introduction, they need to have some sort of assignment and they need to do it. Then the AI will give you a suggestion on how to do a plan for the lesson. Kyle James (05:11.541) Okay. And then as far as, so definitely like the experimentation that teachers have been like, we're just not just Googling and looking at master, but even using it for their own purposes within like their admin, tasks. But as far as like the students go, I think one of the biggest questions are really, you know, topics I would say within the education and students using AI is like, Hey, are they, are they cheating with it? And I think it's safe to say like, yeah, in some cases they are, but like, What have you, how, how are you doing or are able to make sure that like students are not using it for that, but using it for the, for the better cause, within AI. Christina Munk (05:49.518) We have that debate a lot because also for some of our teachers, find it cheating if you use the AI because you don't find the answers yourself. And we're discussing that there's no system at the moment that can check if something is being produced by the generative AI. So we cannot check it in any way. Kyle James (05:57.685) Hmm. Kyle James (06:02.975) Mm-hmm. Christina Munk (06:16.812) So if we give the students an assignment and we don't want the assignment written by the AI, for instance, you can say that you can use the AI for your brainstorm, you can create a mind map, you can get ideas with it, and then as part of the thing that you hand in, if it's a written assignment, they also have to deliver the chat that they had with the AI. Kyle James (06:31.135) Sure. Christina Munk (06:44.608) about how to do this, but then they have to afterwards rewrite that into their assignment. That could be one way of doing it. Another thing could be that they are solving a problem. I had a long session with a student who were calculating some quite difficult calculations on insulation of piping and how much you should use and what would be the benefit. And for there it was a really great Kyle James (06:50.901) to their own words. Christina Munk (07:13.282) partner for him to have the AI for solving the question and still in the end he had to think about is this then the proposal that I want to say to the dairy that they should do and is that a proposal that in the end is economically feasible and he had to sort of assess that. So it's like a help or a partner in my opinion that they use it a lot. Kyle James (07:30.965) Hmm. Kyle James (07:40.213) Yeah, absolutely. think having that partner is, um, you know, especially when there's roadblocks and, like trying to learn a certain concept or trying to get to a certain answer and like, I'm, having trouble getting there. You know, have those, some, some students who say like, Hey, I just need a little bit of assistance. And you have some that, yeah, they're probably just going to try and find the answer. But obviously the first part is we want to make sure that students, they are not cheating with it, but more importantly, they're using it as a support assistant or a partner in their learning. that takes them to the next level. talking a little bit more about like some of the feedback, I mean, what types of, like that's one good example. I love that. Did you have any other maybe feedback from students or teachers that were come across as like very positive? Christina Munk (08:28.066) Well, we built some custom AI for giving feedback to students on assignments that they are doing. So instead of when you have, for instance, 25 students in a class, instead of them having to wait for the teachers to have time to talk with them, they could feed their paper into the AI and then the teacher had coded the AI in the background so that that knew what the demands for the assignment was. and then the AI could give them feedback on their paper so it was a much quicker response for the students than always waiting for the teacher. Of course they also have to talk with their teacher, but when you just one teacher and a big class and everybody wants the help then the AI could also be an assistant to the teacher. Kyle James (09:16.371) Wow. it's almost like, it almost like a feedback assistant for the student that, that could go, Hey, here's, here's my paper or here's my writings. Like, give me some feedback. And then based on that, they can really, imagine pretty, pretty fast. Christina Munk (09:20.588) Yeah. Yeah. Christina Munk (09:29.138) For instance, for when they are a chemical training in chemistry, they have to write two papers before they can go to the exam and then the two papers are part of the exam and they have to write them, but it's like a process where they write something, then they get some feedback from the teacher, then they go back and improve. And instead of always having to wait for the teacher, then now they can use the AI as their partner. Kyle James (10:01.237) Wow, and I would imagine that probably, I don't know how big the class sizes are, maybe 20 to 50, 100 or so. Christina Munk (10:08.206) We have around in our classes 25 up to 30. Kyle James (10:11.605) 25. Okay, good. It's a good, good size, good size group. So I would imagine like a teacher being able to give that to their students to have access to it would probably save them. I guess you would say maybe a little bit of time with, you know, so having to go with them one-on-one. Christina Munk (10:25.058) Yeah, that's one of the benefits, but you can say also for the students, they don't lose time in waiting. They can continue. Kyle James (10:31.295) Mmm. I love that. love that. so stepping into obviously 2025 and 2026 and so on. And so there's a lot happening in the AI world. And what would you say as far as for cold college, like what are some of those upcoming AI initiatives and like, where do you see AI playing? Like the biggest role in your operations next in the education space. Christina Munk (10:57.944) Well, I think we are looking into how well one is how we can be better at using it and how we can be better because it's not just a matter of asking a simple question like what is or explain this to me but to really go into the depth and the way that you prompt it, you make the request for what it is that you want out of it so that you can be much more specific and clear and get the answers out because I'm also We have a discussion both with the teachers but also with the students that they shouldn't necessarily trust the answers that they give. You have to be able to validate what is coming back to them because they can ask really difficult questions and it's not necessarily the truth that comes back because sometimes we see that it just comes up with something because they're built in a way that they will not say I don't know the answer to this so they give you something. and you have to be able to validate this. So that's one of the things that we're discussing. How can we be better in validating what is actually coming out? And then we have had a discussion because we want to create new books for our curriculum because our books are fairly old. But is it actually in 2025 going on to 2030? Are we actually using the effort for writing new books, new teaching materials, or should we rather build an AI system for us that will have all the knowledge that we would like to have it so that the students can use that instead of books. I don't have an answer to that yet, but it's a thing that we are considering. Kyle James (12:34.066) Mmm, that's a really good- Yeah, that's a really good, that's a really good perspective, like whether or not to go towards like reprinting or re redoing a lot of the book content versus, do we just spend the time towards almost like the AI system and make sure that like the students can use that tool if they're already using it. And so I love that. It's, it's a really good, I think intuitive approach, like stepping into this next age of AI. So, and I appreciate the time Christina and for those listening in today, and they're just kind of curious to learn a little bit more about you. Christina Munk (12:53.261) Mm. Kyle James (13:06.341) more about Cole College, where should they go or what do you recommend they do? Christina Munk (13:09.55) Well, we have a webpage for the school that's called college.dk. You can go there. It's in Danish. And if you want to connect up with me or look me up, can look me up at LinkedIn. I'm Christina Monk. Fairly easy to find. I even think, might also say Brewmaster even, because that's... Kyle James (13:29.054) Awesome. Kyle James (13:33.141) Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. For sure. Well, thank you so much for seeing me on the show today. was an absolute pleasure. And those who are listening in, remember if you're looking to implement AI into your business or organization today, don't try and do it yourself. The time and stress that AI could cause just isn't worth it. Schedule a call with GPT trainer and let them build out and manage your AI for you. Once again, that's gpt-trainer.com. Signing off for now. Have a wonderful rest of your day and looking forward to seeing you on the next episode of AI Chronicles.