You may be on high alert for any April Fools Day jokes that may come your way today, but we can assure you that this is not one of them. Artificial Intelligence, or AI as it has come to commonly be known, is making its presence felt and then some in all sorts of ways. Whether it’s recommending a new show to watch or automatically buying you tickets to see your favorite band, AI is getting scary smart scary fast. It’s even making its way into the education community and being used in K-12 schools and higher education across the world. So, what does that mean, how can teachers prepare, and why is that significant? Keep reading and let’s find out!
The Roles Artificial Intelligence has in Education
Artificial intelligence has been a part of our lives for a while. If you have a smartphone, you’ve probably used the personal assistant feature and, if you’ve ever taken a picture with a digital camera, the auto focusing feature is also a form of AI. There’s no doubt it’s getting smarter and being used in many more areas of everyday life, but artificial intelligence is, in all likelihood, just getting started. AI is all about making everyday life, especially recurring tasks, easier and, in some cases, eliminating work for people. We hear it quite a bit that today's education system is far from perfect and that teachers wish they had more time to get more done. Without making too grand of an entrance (no lifelike robots in the classroom), AI already has and can continue to make the lives of teachers easier without transforming the classroom into something out of a science fiction movie.
Many professionals who work closely with the education community believe that there are a number of realistic uses for artificial intelligence in the classroom. For starters, it can be a major time-saving tool for teachers. It can help them grade tests and assignments and even keep track of attendance and other notes they make throughout the school year. This would give teachers much more free time that they could use to prepare in-depth lesson plans, interact with students, or work on professional development. On a more technical side, creators of educational software could use AI to adapt their programs based on what they see are the greatest areas of student need, essentially creating a more personalized learning experience based on direct feedback. AI can also (hopefully without making it sound too much like a person) observe lessons and point out areas where teachers need improvement either in the content they’re delivering or their teaching approach. Pretty cool, huh?
Artificial intelligence can also be used in student tutoring, providing actionable feedback, and changing how students interact with information. In the same way that Google provides search results based on location and online marketplaces recommend products based on what you’ve previously bought, AI could help students significantly narrow down their research in the future by providing intricately personal results. As for teachers, some of them could wind up seeing their roles altered. They could be compelled to step aside and let AI programs answer student questions and even lead some discussions, potentially shifting teachers more towards facilitators. On top of all that, artificial intelligence could perhaps make trial-and-error learning less intimidating for teachers and students, provide data that changes how schools and technology support students, and may even change how students learn, who teaches them, and how they acquire knowledge. It’s pretty alarming to think about all the implications AI could have on education—and the world as a whole—especially since we just don’t yet know what they could be.
Artificial Intelligence and EdTech
Artificial Intelligence is all about making machines smart. As most of us probably are aware by now, AI is being used in tons of different industries already, including music, travel, entertainment, and transportation. It’s also making its way into education and could soon have an enduring relationship with EdTech. Artificial Intelligence is capable of carrying out tasks that would normally require human abilities, such as visual perception, speech recognition, and quick decision making. Just scratching the surface, it seems AI could make an impact in each of these areas by picking up on student cues and attitudes and helping teachers decide what to do next or where to take their lesson. These seem like small examples, but, as artificial intelligence expands, there are sure to be more to come.
Artificial intelligence is capable of adapting to the needs of the people using it. When used in classrooms, this includes teachers and students. AI can help personalize learning in the sense that it will come to learn each student’s individual preferences and recommend learning paths that cater to their interests, which creates opportunities for deeper learning. As its capabilities expand, artificial intelligence could also create new roles for teachers or minimize the amount of work they have to do. If they were to ever adapt AI assistance in the classroom, teachers would need to be just as available to their students in order to provide them with a human element to help answer specific questions or physically assist in whatever way is needed. Plus, if AI is used to grade the multiple choice portions of exams, teachers can spend more time crafting useful feedback on things like essays and short answer questions, creating more meaningful learning.
Other ways of using AI in education include things that take place before students even enter the classroom. That’s right—students and parents can use AI to help find the best schools and programs for what the child wants and needs. Whether they have specific interests or unique abilities, AI, it seems, will soon be able to place them in the best setting possible. Then, once there, it can continue to be a game changer in the ways in which they learn. AI can help students learn from just about anywhere in the world at any given time, maximizing educational efficiency and making modern learning completely accessible. At the minimum, AI can help students learn basic STEM skills, but could end up impacting their real world preparation dramatically before all is said and done.
How AI Brings About Change in Education
We’ve already touched on some of the ways artificial intelligence could impact the education ecosystem as we know it, so now we are going to explore a bit of why this is possible. Not only may AI be able to grade tests taken by a single class, it could very well be given the permanent task of scoring huge quantities of standardized tests. There would need to be a program created that is smart enough to handle the size of that load, however, but we have a feeling that’s in the works. Similarly, AI could soon be used to review and rate college applications. Could you imagine a world in which your child’s future lies in the (nonexistent) hands of a virtual tool that’s supposedly smarter than any of us will ever be? It’s true—students could very soon be affected by artificial intelligence programs at crucial points in their education and perhaps not even know it.
What makes this shift to regular AI use in education possible is the fact that it can be taught. Just like teachers look for key cues in their students’ creative responses, artificial intelligence programs are being developed to recognize these same types of key words and phrases. To take it a step further, there is reason to believe that artificial intelligence will soon be able to answer student questions with the same kind of thoughtfulness as teachers. As students use AI in their classrooms (often without even realizing it), the technology gets to know them. Could it be possible that some day soon artificial intelligence is able to answer a student’s question before they even finish it? While it seems pretty farfetched, the potential stored inside AI is magnificently huge and students will be able to learn much more effectively when they’re able to get specific answers to their questions instead of the generic answers commonly supplied by sources like Google.
Perhaps the largest contribution AI will make to education will be online. Of course, most online education is designed for college and university students, though some high schools do make use of virtual learning as well. Some experts even see the potential of using AI to replace teaching assistants in college classrooms, which begs the question of the necessity of teachers in the first place if artificial intelligence is capable of leading lectures. It seems scary to think that teachers could be replaced, so we’ll reassure you that this will never happen. Maybe classes could survive with an AI leader, but it can’t compare to the intangibles that teachers offer students. On the plus side, the more schools can make use of artificial intelligence in the classroom, the cheaper education might become. As global AI use continues to rise, we can only hope that it uses its powers for good, improving education, and not dictating how it is set up.
Why Education Should be Less Like AI
Everyday aspects of education may soon be affected by artificial intelligence despite a good deal of educators opposing this revolution. Members of the education community can learn a lot from observing artificial intelligence and actually use it to improve their schools rather than being afraid of it. As AI gets smarter, scientists believe it will be able to understand, reason, and even learn, which will help drive knowledge it all industries, including education. Wouldn’t it be neat if contemporary educators could do something similar? For instance, if teachers could intuitively understand more deeply why their classrooms should be evolving and use their curiosity to learn some more effective ways of teaching, they would be doing their students a great service. So, you see, it’s not that artificial intelligence is designed to make this earth-shifting kind of an impact, but you should certainly be able to see where and why it would be useful in modern education.
Since AI tools have become common in smartphones and personal devices, information has become much more available to us all. The question now for those who believe that education should make use of the best learning tools available is when and how the educational system should catch up? To do this, school leaders could consider how artificial intelligence is able to be so helpful with both simple and complex tasks. Essentially, it’s because it keys in on specific things about the people using it, recognizes their personal preferences, and eventually learns to look for the answers to their questions before they are even asked. This is what contemporary educators should be teaching their students to do—not using AI to help answer their questions faster, but thinking like AI in order to arrive at the answers in the most efficient way possible.
By doing this, note only are educators teaching students new and important things, they are teaching them how to learn and, especially nowadays, that’s big. These days, kids can find the answers to their questions simply by typing or speaking into their phones. There’s no need to be creative, no need to collaborate, and no need to do very much work at all. While technologies like AI are very useful in some ways, it may be hindering students’ abilities to learn for themselves. A lot of what students learn comes while they are trying to solve a problem—not once they have already solved it. Without the opportunity to be creative, how are they going to become more valuable than a technology like AI? If they’re not, employers will choose the worker they don’t have to pay. Essentially, AI can teach educators a lot and help them in many ways, but it might also be beneficial for them to look at artificial intelligence from a different angle and use what they learn to build some authentic intelligence in the minds of their students.
How Artificial Intelligence Will Improve Education
Most of the conversation around artificial intelligence in education is speculatory. We really don’t know how much it will improve school practices or if it will have as big of an impact as we think. We can, however, assume that it will be a factor in one way or another. AI start-ups will pop up all over the place claiming to be able to make teaching and learning radically better using their artificial intelligence software. Once let in the classroom, however, AI should at the very least be able to legitimately provide a more pinpointed understanding of when and how deep learning takes place. It should also be able to give educators an indication of how learning actually happens, which can do wonders in terms of how they structure their lessons and how they interact with their students.
Artificial intelligence is constantly looking for triggers that represent certain values they can then turn into knowledge. It can also give teachers measurable forms of feedback in a number of different areas. Presumably, AI will also be able to gauge student engagement levels, highlight some of their strengths, and point out some of their weaknesses. Of course, this could do wonders for gearing teaching towards each individual student on a more personalized level. Children are not always completely forthcoming about what they enjoy about learning, what they don’t like, what they’re good at, and, most importantly, where they need improvement. If AI was lurking in the classroom with them, it could be used to determine each of these and help teachers create lessons that reach all students more effectively.
It has already begun, but there will soon be more advanced models that incorporate social and emotional factors to help create an ideal learning experience for kids. In fact, those researching this possibility believe it may be AI’s greatest contribution toward improving education. Others see AI being used to capture biological data, voice recognition, and even eye tracking and using the data they gather in a number of different ways. Additionally, it may be used to provide real-time assessments, silently monitor student progress, shape learning, and avoid having to stop and test for understanding since it will just simply know when kids are getting a concept. Knowing when, where, and how AI can contribute in a classroom is going to be huge for educators and using it to maximize reach and student performance could soon become the norm.
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