Can AI Really Help Reform our Education System?
If you have been keeping up with the latest tech news, then you may be aware that Artificial intelligence has been receiving a lot of critique in ways AI is being used.
The majority of criticism is in the way that it is becoming a negative tool for users. You might have heard about users, using ChatGPT to write papers for students. But it has emerged that AI is an active force in the education industry. It is actually changing the way students learn and teachers teach and it might just be for the better.
Artificial Intelligence In The Education Sector
Strangely enough AI has recently been noted as a driving force behind a change within the education industry. It’s creating new ways for students to learn and allowing teachers more resources to teach more efficiently.
An exciting way AI is involved in the education system is by completely personalizing students learning experiences. These systems created can also provide support and feedback that will in turn improve education for future generations. Another key point to note is that people who might not have access to education now with the use of AI might have a fighting chance at being able to learn via distance learning.
One example of this is educators using AI tools that can help create a custom style of learning for each student where it notices the students strengths, weaknesses and even their learning styles. This will all aid in helping the student learn more efficiently.
AI can also provide personalized feedback and support to students, helping them identify areas of improvement and offering guidance on how to overcome learning obstacles.
We will delve a little deeper into the way AI is being implemented into our education sector and talk about what type of benefits might come from this form a technology.
Let’s Delve A Little Deeper and See The Benefits of AI in The Education Sector
Before we begin here are some key points we are going to look into, this will help us analyse the benefits of including Artificial intelligence within the Education industry.
- Personalizing learning experiences
- Providing immediate feedback and support to students
- Streamlining administrative tasks for teachers and school administrators
- Analyzing vast amounts of student data
- Enabling remote and online learning
- Enhancing collaboration and communication between students and teachers
- Developing and delivering adaptive assessments
- Identifying students who are at risk
Over the next few years we will see AI become more adaptive into our day to day life, this technology should always be used as an aid. So it’s important to treat AI as such and not to expect AI to run our day to day life or take over our society all together. We will pick a few of these points above an elaborate on them. Some are common sense others are a bit more elusive in ideas.
Personalizing Learning Experiences
Examples of this are AI-powered educational tools and platforms analyse data from students interactions, preferences, and performance to tailor learning content to their individual needs. For instance, AI algorithms can identify a student’s strengths and weaknesses, and provide customized learning materials and assessments that cater to their learning style.
The idea behind this is to enhance students engagement with learning. These AI tools can help monitor engagement/motivation and if the student is struggling the course materials. One key reason why AI should be implemented this way is to free up educators time. So they can prioritize other needs of the classroom. Some student might excel at art, but might be struggling with numbers so mixing the two might be a great solution, stable diffusion could help with this.
Providing Feedback to Support Students
AI and machine learning in general is great at handling large amounts of data in the form of numbers and information. Because of this, AI in education when it comes to providing feedback for students should in theory be an amazing new technology to have.
If we implement AI powered tools where their main purpose is to analyse students learning, from every aspect and angle. Then this AI system should be able to locate any issues the student may be having in certain classes.
Once it has discovered these issues, it would be able to recommended to the student potential ways to get over these obstacles. We have seen examples of this when it comes to AI analyzing students written essays. AI-powered writing tools can analyze a student’s essay and provide feedback on grammar, syntax, and coherence. AI can also provide students with targeted feedback on their understanding of specific concepts, highlighting areas where they may need additional support.
This form of personalized feedback should be able to help students with identifying their strengths and weaknesses in a given subject and to ensure this issue isn’t because of other conflicting factors (issues at home or with other students etc).
This should be used as a guidance tool for educators so they can look for the early warning signs on weather or not as student is having problems in class. We need to ensure that students data is protected or we might see more law suites in our schools just like recent news with ChatGPT and Italy.
Streamlining administrative tasks
This is a no brainer but here are some examples:
- Automating routine administrative tasks, such as grading assignments, tracking attendance, and generating reports, can free up educators’ time, allowing them to focus on higher-value activities such as providing individualized feedback and mentoring.
- AI-powered chatbots can provide instant support to students and faculty, answering frequently asked questions and reducing the need for human intervention.
- AI algorithms can analyze data from student records and provide predictive analytics, enabling educators to identify at-risk students and intervene before they fall behind.
- AI can streamline the admissions process by automating tasks such as application screening and selection, reducing the workload for admissions staff.
- AI can optimize scheduling and resource allocation, ensuring that classes are scheduled in the most efficient way possible and that resources such as classrooms and equipment are used effectively.
- AI can analyze data on student performance and provide personalized recommendations on course selection and career paths, helping students make more informed decisions about their education and future careers.
But as always with any new technology guidance should always be taken, we should not rely 100% on the results given by AI. Not until it has been tested thoroughly and proven to have an excellent track record of providing reliable and positive information for the students in question.
Enabling remote and online learning
Not everyone has access to education, this can be for a wide range of reasons. This is where AI can step in and help students around the world benefit from a decent education. This will of course improve over time, but for the moment here are a few examples of AI being used in the education sector:
- Intelligent tutoring systems they can provide personalized learning experiences to students, even when they are not in a physical classroom.
- AI chatbots can be used to provide students with real-time support and guidance, answering their questions and directing them to relevant resources.
- Virtual reality and augmented reality technologies can provide immersive learning experiences that simulate real-world environments, regardless of the student’s physical location.
The main concern when it comes to AI and helping less fortunate students is the cost. As always with any new technology that is being entered into our day to day lives, it is always expensive to start with. But one ray of hope is that as time goes on it becomes more affordable. All we can do hope is that their will be certain grants and funds for the less fortunate.
Identifying students who are at risk
These new educational tools and platforms could help to asses data on students behaviour, attendance and their overall performance in class. With this gathered information and the use of machine learning algorithms these tools should be able to identify any patterns that might show the student is having issues at school.
An example of this is a system that can flag students who have missed multiple assignments or have a history of low test scores. Once the system has identified an issue with a student then educators can provide targeted support to these students. This should overall lead to better outcomes for students.
So do we really think AI should be incorporated into the Education Sector?
Of course we do, it really is a no brainer. We believe that due to the education sector being full of data and analytics of students information then AI is a great route to go down.
We believe that the use AI would save time, money and even help students have a much better time during their education. Let’s face it, the way the education is currently, a lot of students fall through the cracks and don’t get the help the require early enough. With the aid of artificial intelligence it may be able to identify students earlier on making sure they have a fun time in education leading to better grades and better lives for students around the world.
