AI (artificial intelligence) technology has infiltrated all aspects of our lives, including making its way into our education system. AI’s role in education can revolutionize the way we learn and teach from student engagement to teaching styles, including helping learners of all different styles more accurately understand course materials.
In this article, we’ll outline the many ways AI is being used in education, and it’s impact both positive and negative.
Skip ahead:
- What is AI
- 4 ways AI in education helps improve student outcomes
- 3 ways AI in education benefits teachers
- What does the future of AI in education look like?
What is AI
Before we dive into the many ways AI can help improve the education system first, we’ll define it. So, what is AI anyway?
AI, sometimes called machine intelligence, is the simulated human intelligence in computers. Think SIRI, which uses artificial intelligence for voice recognition.
4 ways AI in education helps improve student outcomes
There are so many ways AI can help students. From identifying early signs of struggle to creating a more interactive and personalized learning plan. Here are 4 ways it can positively impact students’ learning.
Personalized learning
The ability to cater to personal learning styles is one of the most positive benefits of AI in education. AI technology can easily adapt to different learning styles. And taking things a step further, AI technology has the ability to analyze students’ past performance and make tailored lesson plans and adjustments based on past performance.
When it comes to personalized learning, AI can also help point students in the right direction for resources and other useful data and information. AI has the ability to come up with personalized study plans for students without having to wait for interventions from learning specialists. All while meeting the overarching goal of making learning easier and helping students interact more effectively with the material so that it sinks in.
Finally, Where AI really shines from a personalized learning level is its ability to reach students at a mass level. With overcrowded classrooms at the elementary school level and classrooms of hundreds of people at the post-secondary level, AI can help personalize to all students at once, making it easier for everyone to succeed.
Tutoring
Sometimes students need that extra bit of help, and AI allows you access to on-demand tutoring without an actual in-person or live Zoom tutoring session. Because AI uses algorithms to adapt, it can quickly shift to cover the areas students need the most support. Much like a human tutor would adapt to a student’s learning style and ability to absorb the information, AI tutoring systems are quite sophisticated in their ability to focus on areas of strength and improvement to deepen individual students’ education as a whole.
AI-based tutoring technology’s major advantage is the ability to help students understand complicated, sophisticated terms and concepts on a mass level.
Finally, with AI, access to tutoring is no longer limited to those who can afford to pay for it. Additionally, educators can spend less time focusing on helping those who don’t understand the concepts, allowing them to keep the lessons and momentum going.
Assessments and grading
A huge chunk of teachers’ time is spent grading assignments. Ai technology can help speed up this process. In addition, when it comes to improving essays and assignments, AI technology can analyze and give students feedback on things like grammar, content, and vocabulary. By taking that shift off teachers, they can focus on other aspects of teaching that are important, like lesson planning and student engagement.
Finally, one of the biggest advantages of automating assessments and grades is that it eliminates human error, biases, and mistakes. It can also provide each student with a detailed outline of where they went wrong and how they can improve, with no extra time involved for teachers.
Improved student engagement
AI can keep students engaged in educational material and keep learning interesting. One of the ways educators can incorporate AI into the classroom is through the use of Chat Bots. Chat Bots’ ability to personalize and adapt to students’ learning styles creates more opportunities to keep students engaged. And the fact that Chat Bots can be accessed anytime or anywhere means that students can work at their own pace and continue their learning outside of traditional class times.
The fact that AI improves engagement is exciting for course creators. It means they can provide very personalized and interactive learning of their courses, regardless of the topic. Which improves what people take away from your courses and helps strengthen the impact it has on people’s lives.
3 ways AI in education benefits teachers
So far, we’ve talked a lot about how AI can benefit students. However, there is a huge potential impact on educators as well—particularly when it comes to ways it can save time.
Here are the top three ways AI in education is beneficial to teachers.
Predictive analysis
A cool and emerging area of AI in education is predictive analytics. AI can analyze data and predict which students might fall through the cracks. Predictive analytics is exciting for educators as it means students with learning challenges can be identified earlier and given the tools they need to be successful. Additionally, early intervention means that students who may have otherwise failed or struggled have the opportunity to become successful students by being given the right tools to help them succeed.
Enhanced teaching methods
One of the ways AI is used in education is to enhance teaching methods. With so much on teachers’ plates these days, there is often little time to organize alternate ways of learning without putting in hours over and above classroom hours. By using AI technology, teachers have the ability to quickly put together games and simulations that help students practice and learn the lessons being taught without having to put more time into lesson planning, which is a huge time saver for teachers.
Making assessments and grading easier
If you ask any teacher and they’ll tell you that assessments are one of the most time-consuming parts of the job. An exciting area of AI in education is the use AI technology to improve and speed up the assessment and grading process. For example, assessments can be done in real-time rather than having to do lengthy marking at home. Not only is this a time-saver for teachers, but it improves students’ understanding of the material at the moment rather than after the fact.
What does the future of AI in Education Look Like?
AI might be in the early stages of education, but its potential and impact on transforming the future of learning are huge. Like any new technology, it is not without its challenges, for example, the potential for biases to come through when relying on an algorithm. Another challenge, of course, is ongoing training for educators on how to use and incorporate AI into their teaching modalities. Technology changes rapidly, so it involves a lot of learning and adapting on the part of educators.
As course creators, there are many advantages to AI when it comes to developing your learning materials, including quickly developing new courses, creating templates and creating engaging and interactive material for your students.
Interested in learning more about what’s up and coming for the learning industry?
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This post was originally published in April 2023. It was updated in August of 2023 with more information.
