We see the use of AI all around us nowadays. With the introduction of ChatGpt to the world by open AI, we have become more familiarized with the potential of AI and how it can benefit us in our daily lives. Not only in the language domain but also in the Computer Vision domain and the data domain in general. Now that we understand how important Artificial Intelligence is going to play in our lives pretty soon, if not already, it’s time we explore its potential in the education spectrum. Whether it is to enhance learning in general, to be an excellent assistant to teachers, or to just improve individual learning, AI can be that disruptive technology we’ve been looking for in the field of education. Having mentioned it, we also have to keep in mind the ethical implications of using this technology. AI comes with tradeoffs and risks just like the introduction of every single technology that came before it. In this article, we will delve into all these factors and more.
Benefits that AI might bring to the education sector.
Let’s start with the solutions that Artificial Intelligence can build as a start.
Adaptive learning– Let us first ask a simple question, Do all students learn the same way? We see time and time again how various students in the classroom are not being able to keep up with the rest of the class, misunderstand concepts, or just simply lose interest in studying, for not being taught the way they need to be taught. Here Artificial Intelligence can make a big difference. Whether it is at school or at a university level. With tools such as ChatGPT, Students can now get personalized instructions when trying to understand a concept. They can now ask as many follow-up questions as they want to, manage the manner of explanation to them, and ask for resources for every single reply from the AI, which in turn enhances further learning.
In this way, students can improve their skill set at all levels by getting a guided instructional experience, which improves efficiency.
There are also really helpful tools like Gradescope which helps students assess each other. The main features include AI-assisted grading, manual question grouping and much more. Other tools include Queirum which can be used for personalized learning sessions and increasing student engagement.
Assistive technology- There is a multitude of technologies developed with AI integration which helps improve the quality of life and standard of living of individuals with disabilities. Let’s list a few ways they do that.
- Speech recognition- With speech recognition, mobility-impaired individuals can now have a better experience in their learning with its use as little or no hand movements may be required for tasks like note-taking, studying or giving exams. Now these students can accomplish these tasks using their spoken language quite easily with the help of tools such as Google’s Assistance or Amazon’s Alexa.
- Screen Readers- For visually impaired individuals, a screen reader might be just the thing they need for learning without limit. With technologies like VoiceOver and JAWS (Job Access With Speech), contents can now be read aloud over the computer screen.
- Speech-to-Text (STT)- For those who have difficulty speaking or typing, STT might come in handy as they are used to transcribe words to text. Now these individuals can be assisted and learning can now be done more efficiently as communication is much easier for these students.
Data and Learning Analytics- It is incredibly important for our teachers today to understand their students, and figure out who needs help and in what way. It is important not only for the grades that the students get at the end of the year but also for nurturing them throughout the process. Fortunately, with the advancements in Data analytics due to the integration of AI/ML, teachers can not only analyze the marks and performance of the students but also get a measurement of their characteristics. This is because Artificial Intelligence brings with it depth in the details. Now tutors can get detailed information on every individual student, students as a group and in greater context than that, at the click of a button. Not only that they also can get future predictions based on current data on these students. This can in turn help these teachers make decisions that can impact their lives forever.
Writing- What completes learning? Writing. Students need to learn how to write before they learn about the world. Now Artificial Intelligence can help immensely in enhancing that process for a student. Students can now understand and fix their mistakes, as they keep writing. Using tools like Grammarly which uses machine learning and deep learning systems in their product, both students and teachers can now benefit from finding and fixing errors, or finding better alternative words or sentences, in their body of work. Machine Learning and Deep Learning algorithms are also used in the detection of plagiarism in documents as well.
Summarization- The biggest potential we see in AI/DL is in the summarization of documents, books, and papers. We all want this. It greatly enhances learning as it allows us to learn fast, and understand the important points for a particular topic, which in turn helps us understand concepts better and faster. It’s good for memorization purposes as well.
Potential harms of AI:
As mentioned before, AI also comes with tradeoffs. Some of those same benefits mentioned above may enable the students to cheat in their exams, copy work from AI for their assignments, and overall lose interest in learning new things as everything gets easier for them. Along with this, the limitation of Artificial Intelligence is that it is not always accurate. Combining this with over-dependency on AI, can lead to further misunderstanding of concepts, learning wrong information, and overall learning less instead of learning more. There are some suggested solutions to these problems. For example watermarking AI content, improving the quality of the machine learning and deep learning models to reduce false results, more human interference in monitoring the use of AI, and so on.
Conclusion
In this article, we have covered several aspects of Artificial Intelligence in education, from its use cases and its benefits to the potential harms that it can cause. There is plenty to look forward to in the future as we enjoy the benefits, mitigate the damages, and move forward with Artificial Intelligence in our education systems.
AUTHOR’S NAME:
Joshua Tutu
CONTACT INFO:
Atlanta Ga USA
