AI and education: how technology can enhance teaching and learning in the 4th Industrial Revolution

AI and education: how technology can enhance learning outcomes

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a powerful tool that can transform education systems and make them more equitable, inclusive and personalized. AI can help teachers and students achieve better learning outcomes by providing customized feedback, adaptive content, intelligent tutoring and data-driven insights. In this blog post, we will explore some of the ways that AI can enhance education and some of the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.

AI can provide customized feedback to learners

One of the benefits of AI is that it can provide immediate and personalized feedback to learners based on their performance, preferences and goals. For example, Reading Progress, a feature in Microsoft Teams for Education, uses AI to help students improve their reading skills by allowing them to record themselves reading aloud and providing them with visual aids and exercises based on their errors and difficulties. AI can also help teachers monitor students' progress and identify areas of improvement or intervention.

AI can provide adaptive content to learners

Another benefit of AI is that it can provide adaptive content to learners based on their level, pace and style of learning. For example, adaptive learning platforms use AI to analyze students' responses and behavior and adjust the difficulty, sequence and type of content accordingly. This way, students can learn at their own pace and according to their own needs and interests. AI can also help teachers create personalized learning paths for each student and differentiate instruction based on their abilities and goals.

AI can provide intelligent tutoring to learners

A third benefit of AI is that it can provide intelligent tutoring to learners by simulating human-like interactions and guidance. For example, intelligent tutoring systems use AI to model students' knowledge and skills and provide them with hints, explanations, feedback and scaffolding based on their performance and needs. AI can also help teachers augment their teaching by providing them with suggestions, resources and tools to support their pedagogy and curriculum. 

A compelling vision in this sense was presented by Sam Kahn of the Kahn Academy in this Ted Talk. He maintains that Bloom's 2 sigma problem as outlined in his 1984 article, can finally overcome the inherent weakness of group, class-based teaching by offering super personal tutor for each student through a properly trained LLM.

AI can provide data-driven insights to educators

A fourth benefit of AI is that it can provide data-driven insights to educators by collecting, analyzing and visualizing large amounts of data from various sources. For example, Education Insights, a feature in Microsoft Teams for Education, uses AI to provide educators with information on students' engagement, learning progress and well-being. AI can also help educators evaluate the effectiveness of their teaching methods, interventions and policies by measuring their impact on learning outcomes.

Now for real...

If you're thinking that the text you've read so far seems familiar, it's because it was generated entirely by GPT4 on an Android phone using the Microsoft Swiftkey Keyboard. The text's blandness and biases for Microsoft products are evident, but similar AI-powered applications have their uses beyond generating text. So what can AI-powered applications really do for you for teaching and learning?

Firstly, AI-powered applications can be an excellent complement or alternative to a Google or Bing search, and thus shorten the research process. Personally, I've used Forefront.AI and Perplexity.AI, which correctly indicate the sources they use.

Secondly, students can use AI-powered applications as a tutor to learn about concepts they find hard to grasp, for example. However, it's essential to fine-tune them for specific subjects, for example, by uploading personalize materials, for example, with PDFchat. It is also important to use an application that avoids hallucinations or incorrect answers to problems or questions.

Thirdly, and probably most importantly, teachers and lecturers can use AI-powered applications for a host of different tasks such as converting notes into text, responding politely to administration emails, creating instructions for assignments, lesson plans, for aligning learning objectives, activities, teaching materials with assessments, generating multiple-choice and short-answer questions with model answers, and much more.

In general, it's best to use AI-powered applications in steps and split the task into various subtasks. Begin by creating a structure, then indicate sources, and finally, start writing sections while chatting with your bot. Gradually improve your prompt until you trust your output. However, it's essential to remember that you're still responsible for the output. Overall, AI-powered applications have their limitations, but they can be useful for various tasks, from complementing search engines to generating text and assisting students and teachers. 

In my opinion, however, the challenge to make learning more personalized, customize feedback and learning experience is still largely the responsibility of the teacher or lecturer. Eventually, there may be an AI-powered application able to do this properly, but we are not there yet. The current AI-powered tools, however, can not personalize learning, but they make it much easier to do this.