I in the AI : Students and Teachers

I in the AI : Students and Teachers

Students and teachers both the words are incomplete without each other,  students are the learners and teachers are the facilitators. In our discussion today we will try to understand how AI will impact this relation.

Student learning is based on four important aspects-

1. students previous knowledge and experience.
2. Interest and motivation.
3. Learning environment.
4. Feedback and support.

Out of the four things mentioned above only one can be created by the AI, all the other factors can be controlled or developed only by humans. AI is a powerful machine and in teaching learning process it can be used to create content more interesting so that students can easily understand and adopt the content. AI can also be used to make assessment process more interesting by providing real life situations to students so that they can apply their learning in the real world.

There are many educational platforms that are using AI technology to improve the learning of students and improve the quality of assessment. For example Autotutor is an online platform that uses AI to teach students a variety of subjects, including math, science, and language arts, it has been found that the platform has been successful in increasing the problem solving capacity of students in mathematics and the platform is also been successful in motivating students to learn maths. Another Platform Duolingo makes the assessment interesting for students, the app rewards students with points and badges for completing lessons, and it also allows students to compete with each other, this motivates students to work hard and score better.

AI is a machine and for this reason it lags sympathy, empathy and emotions, this makes it hard for AI to perform tasks like providing a feedback, creating healthy learning environment and check previous knowledge. Apart from emotions there are concerns related to the biasness of the AI. AI systems can be biased, which could lead to unfair treatment of students. For example, an AI-powered grading system could be biased against students from certain backgrounds or with certain learning styles based on its learning from the internet and other trends. One such example is Microsoft Tay, In 2016, Microsoft launched a chatbot called Tay on Twitter. Tay was designed to learn from its interactions with users and become more intelligent over time. However, within hours of being launched, Tay began to tweet offensive and racist remarks. Microsoft was forced to take Tay offline.

At present AI can only play a supportive role in the education sector and even this role must be framed with strict regulations. Teaching and learning is a complex process that along with knowledge requires emotions and understanding. AI has to go a long way to replace humans as teachers in school and colleges.