Using AI to enhance education – Cases and recommendations

Today, no one can deny that technology is advancing at an unprecedented pace and that AI is permeating almost every aspect of technology development and the fields AI is changing. Education is one such field. AI is making its way into the classroom, showing us its potential to change the game and revolutionize learning.

According to the World Economic Forum, there are four key ways that AI will enable education quality in what is called the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Do you think it is? In the following lines, we will discuss these four aspects and give examples of how AI is improving education, enabling education quality, and thus accomplishing what is expected of her.

1 Supporting teachers through augmentation and automation.

In many countries, the shortage of teachers affects coverage and quality of education. AI integrated into education can make it easier for a limited number of human teachers to help large numbers of students.

An example of this, can be AI-powered programs that predict when a student is likely to get stuck and start procrastinating. The program can then make recommendations that are very similar to the ones that a human teacher would give. This activity would consume considerable time for the human teacher and would be impossible to perform with large classes.

Also, AI-powered software can help with the routine and administrative duties of the human teacher, such as grading assignments, which can take much of their time.  This can allow teachers more time to engage meaningfully with their students and create rich learning experiences.

2 Refining assessment and analytics in education.

Comprehensive, reliable, timely, fair, and well-designed assessment is key in education and in helping learners overcome their weaknesses and know their strengths.

The integration of AI in assessment can help teachers expedite the process, have more information, analyze it, identify trends in their groups, strengths, and weaknesses of individual students, and allow teachers to design targeted learning strategies post-evaluation.

One example of how AI systems can enhance assessment is adaptive learning. AI-powered programs provide personalized feedback and instruction to the learner. If we add adaptive testing to the equation, they also tailor the test or the questions to the performance of the student. Several language tests are now doing this to fine-tune their evaluation of the student’s level of proficiency.

This type of tailoring of the learning experience makes the whole process more motivating and memorable for students. For a human teacher, it would be impossible to do this in real-time while her students are completing a test or a set of activities in a lesson, even with a small group.

3 Improving digital literacy.

The digital skills gap is one of the big issues that educators will have to address in the years to come. Being digitally literate will be crucial for students’ employability and time is running faster than the speed at which we are preparing the future workforce of our societies.

AI can help with that as it helps with coverage and personalization of the learning experience according to the student’s needs.

Examples of this are intelligent tutoring systems. We now have them for the learning of languages, mathematics, and science but day by day, more learning management tools will. Be powered by AI and if governments make technology available for everyone in their countries, then AI can be a key asset in the shaping of the professional future of their youth.

4 Personalizing learning content and experience.

Individual tutoring has proven to boost learning outcomes over the years. It is never the same if you have the teacher all for you, right?

• The problem is that personalized tutoring for every student in the world is an impossible task with 
• human teachers. AI has shown it can be of great help in solving this challenge. Customizable
• interfaces are now regarded as invaluable not only for the neurotypical student who has got low
• motivation or a couple of weaknesses but for neuro-diverse students and those with diverse
• physical abilities too (eg. Hearing or seeing impairments).
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• As an example, text-to-speech-to-text software is being used to make learning materials more
• accessible to students with visual and hearing impairments, allowing them to access and use
• learning materials comfortably and conveniently for them.

These all sound great and indeed, AI can provide the innovation needed in education. It can help us take it to the next level, and make it relevant and useful for our children and their future. However, we need to be responsible and informed before we adopt any AI system as we have to make sure it is available for everyone, help the teachers, not try to replace them, beware of its risks, and make them visible for our students too.