Artificial Intelligence’s impact on education
Artificial Intelligence has been on an exponential rise with its impact being felt and experienced across all sectors, education is slowly incorporating AI as it presents unique opportunities.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has been on an exponential rise in recent years, with its impact being felt and experienced across all sectors, education had to incorporate AI as it presents unique opportunities.
When the Covid-19 pandemic hit and resulted in a worldwide lockdown: businesses and schools had to turn to technology to adapt. Since then, there has been a rise in our reliance on technology. Learners had to experience and adapt to alternative ways of learning. Following the launch of the revolutionary AI chatbot, ChatGPT, we’ve been flooded with information on how teachers are left to keep up with technology and how this presents the education sector with a unique opportunity. ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence chatbot that caught attention for its detailed responses and articulates answers across many domains.
According to Shaun Fuchs, founder and CEO of Centennial Schools: AI is encouraging education to embrace technology and better integrate technology into the curriculum. “In order to really appreciate and use AI in the education space to benefit learners, we need to relook at the way we teach. All around the world, we teach with testing in mind. This means teaching is done primarily to improve a student’s performance on an examination rather than to enhance his or her understanding of a subject,” said Fuchs.
Fuchs believes AI technology can work hand in hand with teachers and help them become more efficient and decrease their workload. “AI can serve as a learning resource for teachers, providing them with access to a wealth of information that can be used to supplement their own knowledge and teaching materials,” said Fuchs.
“Due to AI’s inability to replicate the traditional educational experience on the same level as human teachers, it is doubtful that it will replace or compete with teachers in the education sector,” he added.
With technology involved, there will always be concerns about the reliability and bias of AI algorithms, as well as the potential for AI to replace humans.
According to Colin Northmore, principal of Evolve Online School, it is important to recognise that AI should be used as a tool to support and enhance learning and studying: not to change the way learning has been done.
AI has consistently shown the potential to revolutionise the education sector and our way of living. For successful integration of AI in the classroom, careful evaluations and consideration need to be implemented to ensure it is fairly serving the best interests of students and teachers alike.
Northmore mentioned a few practical ways AI can be harnessed in the classroom:
- Essay writing: AI can help learners with essay writing by providing prompts, feedback on structure and grammar and even suggesting sources for research.
- Language learning: AI can be asked to write a grammatically incorrect essay with spelling errors, which learners can then use as a task for identifying mistakes and learning from them. AI can also assist in language learning by providing real-time translation and pronunciation guidance. For example, a teacher could use ChatGPT to help students practice their pronunciation of a foreign language.
- Interactive learning: A teacher could create a chatbot that asks students questions and provides feedback based on their responses. This could be used as a form of formative assessment to help students identify areas where they need more practice.
- Research assistance: AI can help learners conduct research by suggesting sources, answering questions, and providing guidance on how to evaluate the credibility of sources.
Community members were asked their thoughts on the future of AI in education.
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