There’s no doubt about the disruptive impact Digital has had on a number of industries this past decade. A lot of these Digital ‘trends’ have also hit the educational sector. Technology has rapidly found its way towards classrooms and students around the world. Nowadays, the printed word and ‘chalky’ hands are a thing of the past for multiple schools, with IPads replacing traditional paper books and Smartboards substituting the old-fashioned chalkboards. Though these inventions have made student-life significantly more convenient, it’s nothing compared to the way Artificial Intelligence (AI) is able to impact the education of future generations. Should we embrace this change or be wary of the negative effects that could derive from it?
Firstly, let’s start off by zooming in on the endless ways that AI can be incorporated in modern-day classrooms. The most important benefit that emerges from ‘’AI Ed’’ is the fact that the typical ‘one size fits all’ approach to teaching, no longer has to be applied. Machine learning, the part of AI that finds patterns in data, can provide valuable insights on the progress of each student resulting in personalized real-time learning plans and customized knowledge (Dickson, 2017). Besides this clear benefit, the value that artificial reality tools such as Oculus Rift and Goole Expedition offers to teachers and students is also significant (Turbot, 2017). Imagine being in class and instead of having the teacher explain and describe topics, such as the human body, you will actually be able to see this for yourself with the mentioned devices. Furthermore, AI offers a variety of tools to teachers helping them with grading and course design activities.
So far, so good right? What could possibly be the issue?
Well, though AI has a lot of potential to positively impact education, the artificial element of all these tools and techniques worries people about losing the human factor in classrooms (Ghafourifar, 2016). With the way AI is developing, we shouldn’t be surprised if intelligent machines take over the role that human teachers currently play in student lives, ultimately resulting in unemployment for teachers.
I personally believe that AI should play a supporting role in the classroom. Especially the potential of providing students with personalized learning plans, is too valuable to dismiss. It will offer students the chance to learn at their own pace and deepen their knowledge regarding things they’re actually interested in. Also, the ability of AI to take care of tasks such as grading, will allow teachers to focus on things that truly need human intervenience, such as bringing creativity and empathy to the classroom. Because no matter how fast, AI is developing, I do believe that humans are necessary to introduce students to these qualities.
But I want to know what you think. Do you believe that AI will affect the education of future generation to the extent of human teachers actually vanishing? And if so, do you consider this to be a positive development?
References
Dickson, B. (2017). How artificial intelligence is changing education. Retrieved from https://bdtechtalks.com/2017/03/09/artificial-intelligence-education-edtech/
Ghafourifar, A. (2016). How AI will disrupt the classroom. Retrieved from
https://venturebeat.com/2016/12/22/how-ai-will-disrupt-the-classroom/
Turbot, S. (2017). Artificial intelligence in education: Don’t ignore it, Harness it! Retrieved from
https://www.forbes.com/sites/sebastienturbot/2017/08/22/artificial-intelligence-virtual-reality-education/#37f5e1516c16
Great post, Yousra. I fully agree with you on the fact that AI offers great opportunities to complement today’s educational programs, especially since it enables a more customised learning experience. And yet, sufficient caution is required to mitigate any potential downsides as the loss of creativity or human interaction.
Especially in primary school, I think AI should only play a very limited role. The focus should rather rely on helping children to develop a sense for mutual respect and appreciation. A key objective of primary education is to stimulate learning in a fun way – not only learning about words and numbers, but also about creativity, communication, and core norms and values. To my mind, this is best done through human interaction and leading by example, emphasising the continuous need for good teachers nowadays.
At later stages of the educational process, AI can certainly add enormous value to both professors and students. Automatic grading, custom-tailored education at your fingertips or extensive feedback on the learning progress are just a few examples. And we are still at the very beginning of exploring how AI can potentially impact and enhance education. I am very excited to see how AI will be adopted by schools and universities!
To be honest, the first system with iPads does not work optimally right now. Students take their iPads home and if they forget to bring them or charge them, they practically do nothing the whole day. Or even if they bring their iPad to school, they can easily play games or watch movies, as it is hard for the teacher to control this. About the same problem will arise when you introduce AI to replace teachers. Students will focus on other things and not necessarily study what they have to. However, I still think AI should provide support to the teacher as well as students. Personalized learning plans, and the ability to correct exams will reduce workload on teachers. Additionally, the process of correcting exams and giving grades might be improved by removing the subjectivity of teachers. In short, the teacher should stay in place, and I agree that AI should only play a supporting role in the education system. The human element of education should not be removed, as it will allow students to reduce their focus on what they actually need, and instead focus on entertainment. Finally, replacing teachers will hurt the social element of classrooms. Therefore, as you mentioned, teachers should be kept in place to bring creativity and empathy to the classroom.
Education is indeed one of the areas that could significantly improve by individualising the learning speeds of students. There are numerous institutions that are trying to implement tech in the classroom at a young age. By extracting digital information from iPads for example, teachers can also learn more about the areas that students are struggling with, so that they can give some additional attention to the student in that area. I think it would be more difficult to use technology in universities, as the workload requires a lot of self-studying theory and articles.
Very interesting topic Yousra! I have worked in education for a while and a teacher has 3 functions in my point of view. 1st,Transfer codified knowledge; 2nd, Being a role model to students/being a story teller and experience sharer; 3rd, pushing/driving the students to do their best either by building up a personal relationship to the student/pupils or enhancing that students/pupils build good relationships among each other. I think AI will be/might be already better at the 1st one than many/all teachers on this planet. The 2nd function could partially be mimicked by AI in the way, that it could maybe at some point show videos of people who went through certain experiences or tell stories that make knowledge more tangible and reaches the student/pupils at a deeper “oh, this actually concerns me” level. However, the part of the 2nd and def. the 3rd function will not soon be performed by AI in my point of view. This is also supported by Brynjolfsson and McAfee (2017) who argue that AI is/will be very good at recognizing emotions, needs and situations but is/will still be bad bad at responding to it in the most appropriate way for a long time. A conflict, argument or debate between students or between students and teachers might be difficult to evaluate/generate for AI driven systems. However, controversial debate and critical thinking, even about knowledge presented by a robot is in my point of view necessary. At this point in time, I could imagine splitting up lessons or school/university days in computer performed classes and teacher/professor led classes. If the math teacher/professor would not have to control/explain every repetitive calculation for instance, (s)he would be really happy to talk to the most interesting parts of mathematics with the students only or even go out with them to the park to figure out where they can find mathematics in the nature around us. At this point in time I would find such a partial work automation in education very beneficial and desirable. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this topic!
Brynjolfsson, E. and McAfee, A. 2017. The Business of Artificial Intelligence. Harvard Business Review.
Where A. Freyaldenhoven looks at this dilemma by splitting a teacher’s function into 3 categories, I’d like to divide tasks in general.
Tasks, whatever they might be, can generally be divided into novel and frequent tasks. There is no doubt that machines will be able to outperform us humans on frequent tasks, it just depends on the quality of data the machine is given. However, machines will not be able to react adequately to new situations, since they have no data on it. This puts a fundamental limit on the possibilities for AI, so to answer your question; human teacher will not vanish. It will still be a human principle you have to report to after an uncommon act of mischief.