News Story

Promptathon 2026: Exploring Critical AI Literacy at the OU

Wednesday 1 Jul 2026

In May 2026, colleagues from across the OU came together for the Promptathon, a collaborative, challenge-based initiative exploring how we use and understand generative AI in practice.

The event brought together 157 participants and 16 facilitators, working in cross-disciplinary teams on a series of structured challenges. KMi’s Nancy Pontika was part of the organising team and was closely involved in coordinating the activity and developing the evaluation report, which captures the outcomes and insights from the week.

What stood out?

A key shift during the Promptathon was moving beyond simple prompt-writing towards critical engagement with AI outputs. Participants reported:

Greater awareness of bias and representation in AI responses
A stronger focus on evaluation and interpretation, not just generation
The value of collaboration across disciplines
Clear demand for further support, resources and shared practice

These findings reinforce a broader point: working effectively with AI depends as much on human judgement and critical thinking as on technical capability.

The bigger picture: the Exploratorium

The Promptathon forms part of a wider OU effort to support collective exploration of AI through the Exploratorium, a shared space for guidance, resources and emerging practice in AI across Learning, Teaching, Assessment and beyond.

The Exploratorium is designed as a living resource, encouraging colleagues to explore, contribute, and share how AI is being used across different contexts.

Read the report

The full Promptathon evaluation report is now available via the Exploratorium. The report provides a detailed analysis of the event, including findings, challenges, and recommendations for future development.

(Image credit: Jamillah Knowles & Reset.Tech Australia / https://betterimagesofai.org / © https://au.reset.tech/ / https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)