In the tech era, the advent of technical innovations is transforming the education sector. The world of academia is witnessing state-of-the-art technologies being adopted for providing a newer and efficient approach towards learning. You will be astonished to know that artificial intelligence (AI) is making leaps into the world of education.
Robots teaching students? That was probably the first image that came to your mind when you think of AI in the classroom. Although the idea seems very compelling to some, we will have to keep that imagination confined to our thought process for several decades. Probably, you are wondering how AI contributes to education? With advanced technologies, the traditional approach of classroom teaching has evolved with time. In recent years, the online platform is gaining prominence and it has evolved into a multi-million-dollar industry. The significance of the online platform is not only its growth but the approach to provide education from the top institutions. Due to the incorporation of AI, several offerings in the online platform such as learning path tracking, real-time assessment, grading, suggestion-based learning have become a possibility. A smart platform for learning, smart content, and grading is possible in recent times. These approaches are now being widely accepted by educational institutions and universities better achieving overall efficiency in administrative tasks while improving the quality of education. The potential of AI can benefit students and teachers with uninterrupted learning and a judgment-free environment. The article will deep dive into how AI is making an impact on education.
Impact of AI in Education
Identifying Learning Needs of Students
As you are aware, there can be several types of students such as very intelligent students, students with special needs, and some students that are moderate performers and need additional attention. AI comes into the limelight for such scenarios. AI is capable of identifying the gaps in each student’s learning, thereby enabling a personalized approach to tutoring and learning. Smart systems can provide the trajectory of the performance of students and track it continuously over time. Each tutor can personally monitor the progress and address each student’s learning gaps with personalized content and tutoring. The students that are lagging can benefit from the direct personal attention of the tutors and maintain a healthy learning environment.
Administrative Assistance
The educator is constantly engaged with a tremendous amount of administrative duties besides their hectic teaching schedules. Typically, these tasks involve student grading, feedback, and additional reports. AI-driven systems enable automated grading, report generation, and auto-feedback efficiently. Such capabilities of AI are highly beneficial for educators as they can have more free time to allot to students and prepare references and study materials for improving the crucial aspects of knowledge building.
Efficient Invigilation
Have you wondered what is the technology that is powering the facial unlock features in your smartphones? You have probably guessed it right: artificial intelligence. So, how is facial unlocking relevant to classroom invigilation? Facial unlocks are a part of facial recognition technology that can detect the human face accurately and provide access to a system. During the examination, there have been numerous cases reported about malpractice. It becomes increasingly difficult to invigilate a large number of students for an educator. AI can provide facial recognition for increased supervision and monitoring of student behavior. Such an approach is also beneficial for having facial unlock for exams that take place online. The students can have access to open the system only if the right person is sitting in front of the system. It is not a far-fetched idea as several organizations are on the verge of making it a possibility.
Grading & Assessment System
AI has the potential to contribute towards the most strenuous activities for a tutor which is the grading and assessment. It is practically very tiring for an individual to manually handle the grading and assessment for a class of over 30-40 students. AI can provide a real-time assessment system. Additionally, this grading system can be elevated to the next gen-tech by providing additional features of combining data science and machine learning techniques for performance analysis and conceptual clarity of each student according to the time taken to answer each question. With auto-grading, certain scenarios of bias in terms of grading can be erased for the betterment of the learning environment.
Smart Knowledge Repository
The learning management system (LMS) is already in existent in colleges and universities. However, certain LMS are not utilized to their full potential. The learning management system can be incorporated with AI capabilities for providing a robust approach to learning. AI can contribute towards making it more dynamic by providing features such as a 24/7 accessibility digital library consisting of digital textbooks, reference notes, links and study materials, and a suggestion-based system based on their learning pattern. The students will have the possibility to provide feedback to subject-based tutors for their preferred learning approach as well as any additional support that is required. Such a smart AI learning management system can provide features of submission of assignments and also an extension of deadlines as per their needs as some students may require more clarity about concepts.
The educators can have the accessibility to keep the track of the learning path of the students, keeping an updated curriculum and lecture notes for the upcoming lessons. On the other hand, by adding machine learning-based analytics, tutors can address the gaps in the learning process well in advance. Furthermore, the videos of previous lectures can be uploaded as well. AI systems can also enable the tutors to have accessibility to the links and references during lessons and can present it to the students without requiring any delay of waiting for students to buy the reference books to follow in the class. This approach will allow for the course to be completed promptly.
Bias-Free Mentoring Possibilities
We have discussed the possibility of a suggestive-based system. It is common practice for a university to have tie-ups with several industries and people from academia. AI can take this practice and transform it into a bias-free mentoring platform. With the suggestive-based system, it can become a fruitful outcome for students and teachers to be engaged with experienced industry professionals and academia that can have direct interactions with students when a particular student is suggested to reach out to a particular mentor. Once a suggestion about a particular mentor is made by the AI, the student should be able to have access to some content by the experienced mentors without the need for flushing out a huge sum of money. Another key benefit of AI for mentoring could be the use of the student statistics that can be studied by the career guidance teams and provide students with the necessary exposure at an early stage to build a solid career. Some examples could be career guidance on what subjects they can pursue in higher studies, students that have a keen research interest can be introduced to the world of research at an early stage to continue their learning journey.
Interactive Education
In recent years, the growth of technology has reached beyond imagination. If you are familiar with Alexa and similar voice assistants, then it is interesting to discover that the technology behind such tech is AI. Today, AI has made learning fun. The learners of various age groups are benefiting significantly from their interaction with such voice assistants. It is not monotonous and it develops a keen interest to find out the capabilities of the system, therefore it has been used highly for searching education-related contents. Some of the most searched questions are on temperature, the question on countries, capitals, languages spoken, animal habits, and so on.
When we talk of interactive content, it is not confined to just interaction. With the use of AI, educators can provide visually appealing content that allows students to grasp concepts more easily. The use of AI and virtual reality can make education reach new heights by allowing students to have visual interactions of the concepts they have been learning theoretically.
Security
Perhaps, the most important contributions of AI are providing security features in combination with other upcoming technologies. Although computer security is entirely different, it is expected that security specialists will require AI tools for performing the tasks more effectively. As per Cisco reports, it has been reported that AI can contribute by detecting unusual patterns in web traffic. Therefore, it is essential for alerting the professionals for tightening the security and monitoring any unusual activity. The cases of stealing of data, fraud activities of wrongfully presenting a certificate of education are increasing, thus AI can be a valuable addition for eliminating such activities.
Successful Stories of AI in Education
Artificial intelligence is growing in prominence and it is getting acceptance in the world of education. Some of the successful implementations of AI in the field of education are listed below.
Providing Solutions for K-12 human capital, business operations, and student management. HRMS and recruiting, absence and time, professional growth, school health management, service management, ERP, SIS, and special education management are some of the offerings.
Nepris focuses on connecting educators and learners virtually to a wide range of industry mentors that provide sufficient exposure to students globally.
Osmo is a gaming company that aims to provide a gaming-based approach to learning. The company provides its technology called Reflective AI. The games are designed in a way that requires creative thinking, social interaction, and additional components to interact within the platform. Some of the learning activities include math, puzzles, coding, business, spelling, and drawing.
Fishtree is a platform that is created to address the challenges related to the scalability of personalized learning. The company is dedicated to providing AI solutions for automation of resource generation, auto content alignment to learning objectives, and learning gap identification.
NWEA uses machine learning techniques for providing student assessment solutions.
Gradescope provides grading and assessment possibilities online or in the class. This company allows for grading in a faster way from anywhere in the world. The options include scanning of student work, grade submission, exporting and sending grades, analysis reports, and instant feedback possibilities.
Panorama is the one-stop solution for accessing key student information and a visual dashboard. You can use the platform for data interpretation and improving student performance. The offerings from this platform include student success tracking, student and adult social-emotional learning, surveys, and professional development.
The most popular AI solution in recent times is Grammarly. The platform is an AI-powered writing assistant for mistake-free writing solutions and suggestive options for correcting and improving your writing.
Sphero is a platform that focuses on special needs education, social-emotional learning, incorporating STEM education, and hybrid learning online. The platform looks to transform the approach of student engagement. The environment ensures there are collaborative learning and critical thinking. With several activities like robotics, guided tasks, technical bits, the platform aims to build on the creative aspects of the students.
Realizeit is another AI platform that is targeting the individualized learning approach. The company offers a Realizeit Adaptive Intelligent Engine, that adapts to the learner’s changing skills and abilities. Due to AI implementations, the platform can keep track of its accuracy and performance. The outcome of a learner’s changing skills shapes the path of the personalized learning experience. The teachers can track the results and adapt their teaching approach according to the student.
Artificial intelligence has become an integral part of academia. In the world of education, online learning has emerged as a multi-billion-dollar industry, with several notable institutions of the world playing a significant part in its success. AI will continue to evolve through the years, therefore it is essential to understand its role in the field of education. It is important to strike a balance and have collaborative efforts of educators and technology in making education bias-free and a global process. A key aspect of the contribution of AI is to provide the teachers to perform their job more efficiently without additional laborious tasks. The educators will remain the most powerful force behind imparting high-quality education. However, AI is here to make education accessible to all, and to empower the generations to become key contributors to society with limitless education.
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