How AI Enables Us to Reimagine Education?

With the COVID pandemic now taking the form of an endemic, online and in-person classroom education will co-exist for the foreseeable future and even beyond. Especially, as the world has been taking notice of the myriad benefits online teaching to engage students and promote better understanding. Now, academic and educational institutions are deploying technologies that can be leveraged to make education more impactful and effective. One such technology that’s being embraced by several schools, colleges and universities is Artificial Intelligence. AI is perhaps one of the most loosely used terms in today’s digital lexicon including in the space of education. Therefore, we thought we should clear the fog around what AI powered education actually looks like and what new possibilities it creates for both, learners and educators. This blog post encapsulates the broader applications of AI that are making education smarter, efficient and impactful. So, let’s dive right into it.

Artificial intelligence implies programming the computer to think cognitively and make decisions like a human based on the data that’s been fed to the system. The AI based applications comprises expert systems (system with decision making ability like humans), natural language processing (NLP), speech recognition and computer vision. AI supports education in various capacities, including conversations, sentiment analysis, assessment analysis, self-directed learning and more. AI uses indices such as Quality of Interaction (QoI), Quality of Collaboration (QoC) etc. as the base for its systems. Let’s understand some real-world applications of AI in the education space and how it’s proving to build a stronger and more robust learning infrastructure for learners and teachers today.

For the longest time, we have ignored the fact that each student has a different style, pace and system of learning. Students may be oblivious of their own ways of absorbing knowledge, but an AI powered machine can track that and help learners learn in the way that’s most natural to them. Based on a student’s behavioural responses and actions on digital educational programs, and using a host of different metrics, the AI-enabled system will identify areas of improvement and interest, and direct the student to the right resources to help bridge the gap in understanding. This is how a personalised learning pathway is created for each learner using AI. Let’s tell you how we do this at Deetya. Deetya’s adaptive learning engine are capable of creating highly personalised learning pathways for each of our user. Now, these adaptive learning engines are designed to build a comprehensive profile for each learner to measure parameters such as knowledge retention level and emotional states. Using these parameters, Deetya creates adaptable learning approaches and methodologies, diagnostic tests and sequencing of questions for every learner. Personalised learning pathways allow educational institutes to meet the needs of each student and ensure institute-wide performance excellence.

Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) is an extension of the personalised learning capability of AI where personalised instruction and immediate feedback is made available to each student based on their current learning activity. This is essentially like a teacher teaching the student in real time. Using ITS, systems can be programmed to become experts in multiple subjects to offer personalised tutoring to every student any time they want.

AI driven conversational applications can have conversations with students, just like a teacher or a peer. Academic institutions and organisations can build their own chatbots that work as teaching assistants, also called as Intelligent Personal Assistants (IPAs) to accommodate learning needs of different kinds of learners in classrooms as well as out-of-class environments. These bots offer scalable solutions for institutes allowing students 24×7 access to their teaching assistants, leading to continual student engagement and learning

With advanced real time language translation ability offered by AI applications, teachers can now reach learners across cultures overcoming the language barriers. This creates a global learning environment for students and teachers from different cultures to share, exchange and collaborate on ideas and concepts revolutionising the way education is imparted. Taking learning beyond the physical walls of a classroom and now beyond the geographical boundaries of a region is one of the biggest contributors to making learning and teaching accessible to every student and teacher in any part of the world. And AI is making significant contributions in this mission.

Automation of teaching and learning processes using AI helps teachers save a lot of time that’s spent on administration related activities. Tasks such as attendance management, sending timely reminders, conducting proctored examinations, grading, reporting and even evaluation of written answers become less time consuming and effortless using AI. These AI based systems offer insightful analytics to gauge student performances allowing teachers to tailor the curriculum, lesson plans, and teaching techniques to meet the needs of a larger student base.

With time, the number of academic institutions and corporate learning departments will switch to digital learning that’s driven by AI systems. In our mission of making education more impactful, AI is a powerful component that leads to remarkable learning results and outcomes for our educational systems. New age applications in AI can read student emotions from their voice and alerts teachers about the emotional state of students. This will help teachers identify struggle or frustration among their students enabling them to offer timely support to such students in a much more effective manner. The biggest advantage of AI in education is that it empowers teachers to focus their time and energy where it makes the real difference – on teaching and learning