AI continues to make strides in how it’s helping shape technology. Most recently, there have been numerous integrations of what is known as generative AI. This is where programs and platforms can help create content for us in various ways, leading to explosive popularity. Some programs can now produce high-quality writing and even art for us. This has continued to expand and will affect how education is going to be done in the near future.
Technology is always helping to be a tool for improvement and not really a replacement. It’s meant to help us speed up repetitive tasks and improve ourselves, taking us to the next stage. Just like automatons in a factory didn’t eliminate the need for factory workers, or spreadsheets didn’t stop the need for bookkeepers or accountants. In fact, these continue to be in high demand and require specialization.
AI will not replace where we go to learn but will finally be able to enhance how we are educated. It will refine, craft, and tailor educational needs to the individual so that everyone can understand, even if they aren’t from the same starting point. AI will help to bring a group of students to the same endpoint. This is invaluable as it allows us to become more knowledgeable faster and improve everything around us.
Increased accessibility and equitable education
The internet helped to make our world feel connected and smaller. It also helped to make the possibility of education a lot more accessible. We saw the rise of remote classes, tutorials, and certificates explode online. Being able to do these things from the comfort of our own home and not having to always travel to learn greatly boosted our educational prowess.
Yet, it was still missing some components that weren’t as inclusive as they could be. The first comes for those who may not speak the main language of the class itself. AI can help form near-real-time translation tools. These enable students from all over the world to learn both from the comfort of their homes and their primary language.
It can also help those with a disability to rebuild the material to have them access the educational content around their disability. A great example is text-to-speech functionality powered by AI. This is priceless for those who aren’t able to read because they are blind or partially sighted. Or it can do the reverse and do offer speech converted to text in videos for those who are deaf or hard of hearing. This gives real accessibility to anyone who wants to learn.
Learning that’s personalized
Personalization is another area where AI boosts the future of education. It works by tracking the progress of students through a course and even a semester. Examiners can then use the details they receive to build an approach to learning which is custom-made for them.
AI can also help in building out study plans that work with your schedule and let you know where to revise more. This includes saying whether a topic has been difficult for students in the past.
It can also highlight whether your progress has shown that you’re weak in a certain area. Not only that but it can help bring fresh content and materials to your study needs that can help you learn in the best way for you.
With AI powering your personalized approach to education, it can help tweak the difficulty of a lesson or course based on your advances. If you’re mastering the material, then it will work on more challenging content within the same topic. This is so you’re learning more without the rest of the class feeling as if they are left behind.
It also works for students who are struggling in a certain area. AI can generate more practice problems in those areas and work on those weaknesses while enabling students to develop their strengths and talents. This is a much more effective and efficient way for students to learn in a proper environment without having to feel bad or dumb if they don’t seem to get something right away.
Better Engagement
Sitting in a classroom with a group of students after a while can seem tedious and even monotonous. It’s the same type of repetition over and over again, with new content to learn and decipher and then be tested on. AI can help build better interactive ways with gamification to bring back the fun of learning versus being focused on just a scored number at the end.
AI can develop simulations of what is being learned and break down the complexity of even the most difficult problems in layman’s terms. This makes it more engaging and stimulating versus the traditional lecture-based classroom. You’ve got more students engaged in the learning and the discussion, which will help them retain the information better.
It will also motivate them outside of the classroom to learn because of the way they are being educated.
More Accurate Assessment
This is also inclusive of feedback and with real time feedback it helps to take the burden off a teacher to provide constant review comments that can be assessed systemically. This lets students know if they are on the right track of learning or if they need to change anything to improve their path.
Assignments for an English class can be corrected automatically by AI for example. It will look at the grammar, spelling and composition.
It can also do the same when it comes to checking math work and providing students with the correct answers in an objective way. So teachers can focus on the teaching aspect, provide overall educational and behavioral feedback. Not to mention they can be less involved with administrative tasks.
In the end
Think of AI in education as a way to supercharge the experience. Due to the wonders of technology it’s made learning a much more vibrant and enlightening process. It’s what teaching and learning were meant to be and AI is helping us get back to it.