Over the past few years, the use of AI in education has taken the front line as the new wave that is revolutionizing learning systems. Artificial Intelligence is touching every aspect of education right from designing individual learning paths, to administrative workflows. It is bridging gaps for students from disadvantaged backgrounds and offering teachers professionally enriching instruments to implement in the classroom. In this conceptual blog, I’ll discuss the key themes pertaining to the use of AI in teaching and learning, its advantages and limitations and potentials for the future of education.
What is AI in Education
Artificial Intelligence entails the use of different technologies with the objective of mimicking human intelligence processes. In the field of learning, AI will be able to process, understand or come up with decisions based on large volumes of information. Precisely for this reason, AI is a valuable asset to educators as well as students due to it striving to create unique scenarios to shape education as per fellows’ needs.
Personalized Learning Experience
Out of the many AI benefits in education, one of the greatest is the ability to customize learning to a specific student. Mainstream education environments are usually institutionalized and thus their educational structures do not greatly accommodate the students’ differences. On the other hand, it has the capability of effectively analyzing a student’s learning style, capacities and deficits so that the teacher may suit the class requirements.
For instance, Knewton and the DreamBox Learning applications have been designed to incorporate artificial intelligence languages for adjusting to the student’s learning needs. These platforms monitor their student’s performance in real time; as a result, they adapt the level of difficulty of the problems, suggest resources, and give feedback that corresponds to the student. This type of learning promotes participation, encourages the learner and generally results in better achievements among the students.
Intelligent Tutoring Systems
Another application area of Artificial Intelligence in education is the construction of intelligent tutoring systems (ITS). They are well designed to mimic one teacher-student setup, and include helpful instructions as well as feedback of the learner. They can determine the mastery level of a learner and learning rate and the material can be customised to the learning process. To illustrate this, intelligent tutoring systems available in the marketplace such as Carnegie Learning and ALEKS specialties in mathematics. It provides students with problem-solving strategies, providing clues and descriptions of what they are doing and why doing it the way they are doing it is proper. This kind of support can be especially helpful to a student in case he or she suffers from poor performance in regular classroom lessons so that he or she can be able to study at his or her own pace.
Improved and Efficient Administrative Machinery
AI in education is not only in the students’ area, they are also applied in administrative areas. The current workload of educators ranges from correcting assignments, to dealing with tough schedules. Some of these tasks can be easily handled by AI which will save teachers some time and allow them to channel more time into teaching and students.
For instance, it is easy for commercially available AI algorithms to grade multiple-choice tests and even analyze and give insights on performance of learners. This makes it easier for teachers to look at trends and come up with other areas that the students may require special attention. Also, AI can assist institutions to allocate limited resources in a manner that will see students receive the necessary support.
Enhanced Education Accessibility
It also helps in bridging the gap of students with disabilities and enables them to improve the education system as well. Technology that help with learning include software that can interpret speech, voice recognition and the software that converts text to speech helps students with hearing impairment or visual impairment to learn effectively. Mobile AI applications can also help students translate what is being taught if they come from different linguistic backgrounds for them not to miss out on the information being passed due to lack of comparable linguistic prowess. Furthermore, user identification based on the principle of least privilege to access specific resources and abilities will benefit educators wishing to create content adapted to the student’s individual needs to receive additional support based on disability.
Challenges and Concerns
While there are numerous opportunities of using AI in education, there are key challenges and concerns to ponder over. The first among these is the privacy of the data obtained from the social sites. While using AI systems to capture even large quantities of data for more focused learning, the issue of privacy of this information must be paid particular attention to. Any educational center has to ensure that the data of students are protected and meet the requirements for data protection.
One of the main issues faced when implementing artificial intelligence is that it can be easily predisposed. In any way if AI systems are trained on a biased primary data then the model developed may also become biased and may tend to replicate the biasness of the education system that exists in our society. Therefore, developers and educators ought to be informed about these biases and engage in interventions that will ensure that the tools developed are as reasonable as can be.
The Future of AI in Education
With the help of AI technology the process of education will only improve in the future. As we move forward in the future, we can anticipate even greater advanced AI instrumentalities which contribute to the learning process. AI along with VR and augmented realities may help to develop the environment that will allow the student to interact with the material in a non-traditional approach. Also, it makes education a lifelong process for which AI can provide specific professional development tools for teachers. This way, AI will be able to recommend specific training and materials needed by teachers in order to maintain relevance in their classrooms.
Implementation of AI in education is not a trend, but the new normal for education and learning. Thus, AI is revolutionizing education by their appropriateness, the optimization of administrative work, and a more convenient learning process. But, there is the need to address the challenges and the imprinted questions of ethical nature in order to pave the way for a locked down fair and secure AI in a learning environment for the learners. In the future, it will be important for educators, policymakers, and technologists all to work together to make the most of AI with education systems. Therefore, by adopting this innovation, it becomes possible to design a better learning process for every learner from different parts of the world.
