Artificial intelligence technology is helping to change many aspects of life today.
As business development professional Fahim Imam-Sadeque explains, this includes how teachers teach, and students learn.
Education is ripe for positive change, and AI can provide many improvements. Here are just a few of the ways AI technology is helping to empower these changes in the education industry.
Automation
The main job of teachers is to educate. The challenge is that many educators today spend a lot of their time on tasks that aren’t directly related to educating.
Some of these tasks include grading homework and tests, reading essays preparing teaching materials, organising various resources, and doing other administrative work.
A recent survey from the UK’s Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills found that teachers spend only 43% of their time educating.
Artificial intelligence can help teachers increase that percentage by removing some more cumbersome tasks. This is done through automation by grading some tests and managing some of the administrative work that the job requires.
Personalised Materials
So much of education in the past was based on a generalised set of materials and courses. It’s been next to impossible to provide highly personal courses and materials to each student. Yet, the research tells us that this personalised instruction works the best.
Artificial intelligence and machine learning can enable this customizability in the classroom. Teachers don’t have to change the coursework or the lesson plan, but they can provide personalised supplemental materials to help each student learn the best way for them.
Filling Gaps
Teachers are, of course, not perfect. Sometimes, they may think they are presenting material effectively and efficiently when the students are just not getting it.
Machine learning can help teachers identify any areas where they may not be performing as best as they could, allowing them to fill any gaps they have created. One example is helping teachers identify a potential gap if a large number of students got a particular question — or group of questions — incorrect on a test.
When this happens, it might be due to how the teacher prepared the lesson plan and reading materials or how they communicated new concepts to students. In this case, AI can help teachers improve their own skills.
Always-On Learning
Technology never sleeps — unless we ask it to. As a result, AI is available to students 24/7, enabling them to learn at their pace, whenever they want to, and wherever they are.
In many ways, as Fahim Imam-Sadeque says, AI helps to break down physical barriers to learning. This could include the classroom, which is only open to help students during school hours. It could also include where students live.
AI can create immersive learning experiences without the need to travel far distances. Suppose students are learning about rainforests, for example. In that case, they can be transported to the Amazon in South America to see “first-hand” how the ecosystem works, thanks to the power of AI and advanced technology.
Features such as these help make learning fun, which is essential in getting students interested in schooling and education. The more interested students are in the material they’re learning, the more likely it is to stick with them well after leaving the classroom.
Ultimately, AI empowers educators and students to be their best possible selves. And in the end, this is at the heart of what education is supposed to be.
About Fahim Imam-Sadeque
Fahim Imam-Sadeque is a business development professional with proven experience in the asset management industry. He has a Bachelor of Science in Actuarial Science from the City University of London and is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries. Fahim’s top skills include asset management, hedge funds, investment management, sales, and consultant & client relationship management.
