In the early 1970s, the introduction of the calculator caused a heated debate among technology adopters and mathematicians, as calculators were considered a threat to learning mathematics. In later years, however, it has been widely adopted and considered an essential tool to perform mathematical problems. Calculators started performing simple and repetitive mathematical calculations to help students focus on mathematics learning and solving complex problems. Similar to calculators, artificial intelligence (AI) tools are now considered a threat to traditional research and learning methods. Technological innovations or tools become essential to our lives as we progress and continue research.
In the same way calculators have become an integral part of our learning process, AI tools also have the potential to revolutionize the industry. AI has emerged as an innovative technology across various sectors, and the education domain is no exception. Many educational institutes and online learning platforms have started building adaptive, personalized learning solutions using AI and ML systems, changing the landscape for the entire field. AI is bringing new opportunities to address some of the most significant gaps in our education field. However, these rapid technological developments and advancements often create potential risks, challenges and ethical concerns. This article aims to highlight the new opportunities, the impact on the education industry, and the complexities and challenges in play.
What is possible with AI?
Personalized Learning: Tailoring Education to Individual Needs
Traditional tools or software cannot scale and fail to cater to the diverse needs of individual students; in such situations, AI tools offer personalized learning experiences and customized courses for students across the globe. AI-powered systems are built using large deep learning models with billions or trillions of parameters, and these systems have the ability to continuously process and analyze vast amounts of data, such as students’ learning progress, performance, behavioral patterns, subject interest, and learning behavior.
Adaptive learning platforms use AI and Natural Language Processing (NLP) algorithms to assess students’ current knowledge and expertise, track progress, and provide recommendations and suggestions based on student responses and feedback. This approach helps students learn the subject based on their pace and helps them feel challenged simultaneously and not overwhelmed, leading to an optimal environment. For example, if a student excels in a quantitative subject like mathematics but struggles with languages such as English, the adaptive learning platform powered by AI provides more advanced mathematics problems while offering additional support and guidance for language-related subjects. AI-driven personalization can present information in a format that resonates with each learner, and provide extra support in customizing courses or subjects for individuals who may have challenges in seeing, hearing, thinking and talking.
AI as a Teaching Assistant
In this AI era, teachers, professors and education administrators can adapt AI-powered systems and learning platforms to empower themselves without the fear that AI will take over their jobs. AI can perform monotonous, time-consuming and repetitive administrative tasks and free up educators to build a curriculum, understand students’ challenges, or focus on students’ needs by inspiring and mentoring them.
For instance, teachers can use AI-powered automated grading systems to grade multiple-choice questions. Teachers can use assistance from AI while evaluating written responses and provide nuanced feedback that can take the historical evaluations into consideration and provide insights into students’ progress, as well as help the educator provide constructive feedback tailored to the specific student and their learning needs. AI-powered tools have the potential to save teachers precious time in repetitive or mundane jobs and allow them to build effective assessments to measure individual performance, give timely feedback, and focus on improving education quality.
AI systems can act as virtual teaching assistants and ensure support for learners outside regular classroom hours. The AI chatbots can answer repetitive, frequently asked or routine questions, and help teachers focus on content creation or building a course. The AI-based learning platforms can provide valuable insights into every student’s performance and growth plan. Teachers can analyze these patterns and provide targeted support to each individual based on their needs.
Bridging Gaps and Expanding Access
AI-driven platforms can change the lives of rural, underserved or underfunded areas by offering educational resources, opportunities and support, irrespective of their geographic location or socioeconomic background. As the reach of the internet expands, AI tools can be made available in more and more places, allowing students to learn anytime, anywhere, at their own pace. However, we must remember the entry barriers for these underserved areas. These include access to the internet, technological equipment (such as computers, laptops or mobile devices), and electricity. These communities can reap the benefits of AI-driven educational resources only when we are able to satisfy these basic requirements. Additionally, AI tools can assist in building culturally appropriate and context-specific educational material for diverse communities.
AI tools can utilize user feedback and suggestions for insights to share with content creators to improve and customize educational material based on users’ needs. AI systems have the potential to enable opportunities for distance learning students, improve the online education platform experience and streamline courses and training. With access to the internet, students, teachers and mentors can connect from around the world and share ideas, challenges and solutions on these new AI-powered learning platforms.
AI may help foster inclusivity and diversity by providing students with disabilities access to these learning platforms using technologies such as speech-to- text, text-to-speech, or language translation tools. AI systems are breaking the traditional classroom boundaries and allowing collaboration globally, where language barriers are addressed through AI.
Ethical Considerations and Challenges
As technology innovation continuously strives to improve user experience and customer success, it also brings notable ethical concerns, data privacy issues and challenges that must be addressed. AI-driven systems consist of models trained on large amounts of data to function effectively. Robust data governance practices should be in place to avoid data breaches and sensitive information leaks. Universities and educational institutions must establish clear data government policies to ensure the data is stored, processed and used ethically.
If the data fed to these models and systems is biased, it can lead to biased AI systems and result in significant problems with incorrect outcomes or unexpected results. One of the common biases is algorithmic bias, where the data used to train the model is biased, leading to biased results. For example, if the models are trained only with data from students from high-income backgrounds, these models may not perform well in schools with lower- or middle-income backgrounds. AI models must be trained on diverse datasets and require regular audits to detect biases and prevent such occurrences.
Another challenge is that the extreme dependency on AI tools can lead to a loss of one’s originality in problem-solving or critical thinking. Overusing these tools can diminish the importance of human touch and interaction in this field. We need to use AI in a controlled fashion and achieve the right balance between AI assistance tools and humans.
Transforming Education Via AI
AI has started transforming the education industry and opened opportunities for students and teachers to boost their productivity and creativity. AI will perform mundane tasks and give the time back to the educators to invest in the course, themselves and their students.
It can tailor learning experiences for individual students’ adaptive instruction, where AI tools can identify students’ learning gaps, adjust instructions and enhance learning experiences such as virtual reality experiences and simulations. These benefits must be balanced against ethical considerations and the irreplaceable value of human interaction in education.
Through this AI-driven educational revolution, our goal should be adopting artificial intelligence and machine learning tools to enhance our education system and learning experience for students, and helping educators build creative and effective education systems.
