How Are AI Tools And Technologies Used In The Educational Sector?
It’s 2020, and yeah, we’ve come a long way from the days when we had to queue outside the school library to photocopy a few Encyclopedia pages to serve as a reference for our school projects.
Education has been dramatically revolutionized and overturned in this digitally driven world as this generation has grown up with the benefit of having access to technology at their fingertips. What if you don’t have access to an encyclopaedia? All you need is access to the Internet! What if you don’t have a chalkboard? Interactive whiteboards are all the rage these days. During the COVID19 crisis, were you quarantined at home and unable to attend classes physically? Enters online tutorials and classes!
Artificial Intelligence is one such technology that has steadily made its way into education. Who says this technology is still confined to the realm of science fiction? Artificial Intelligence Applications are poised to encroach on any industry dealing with vast amounts of data, so why should education be excluded? While the academic sector is still predominantly human, perhaps even more so than most, this does not negate AI’s role in this domain. Teachers and educational personnel can still benefit from using this technology in various ways.
Slowly but steadily infiltrating this domain, AI tools and technologies have begun to find its place in the academic arena, making it more accessible, and personalized learning using AI is one example. Technology has revolutionized the field of education by creating educational resources more available to all through the use of smart devices and computers and by automating all complex administrative procedures, allowing professors to devote more time to their pupils.
Artificial Intelligence Applications In Education
Although it’s too soon to anticipate our fantasies of seeing humanoid robots functioning as instructors to come true anytime soon, a slew of initiatives is being introduced or developed that use AI to help educational professionals and students get the most out of their educational experience.
The following are a few AI applications that are helping to shape and define the educational experience of today and tomorrow.
Personalized Education
Artificial Intelligence Applications are being utilized to customize learning for individual students. The AI technology is incorporated into the hyper-personalization concept, which is enabled by machine learning, to create a personalized learning profile for each student and tailor their training materials individually, taking into account the student’s preferred learning mode into account, ability, and experience.
Teachers can help students understand their courses by breaking them down into smaller study guides, intelligent notes, or flashcards. Learning is expected to become more digital, with AI tools and technologies assisting in creating digital content and less reliant on paperbacks and hard copies.
Students can use various AI-powered apps and systems to get quick and tailored responses and have their questions answered by their lecturers. AI is also being used to improve tutoring and create personal, conversational education assistants to assist students with homework and other activities.
The Era Of Voice Assistants
Voice assistants are yet another AI component being successfully used by educators in the classroom. These voice assistants allow pupils to interact with instructional materials without the teacher’s involvement. They can be used in educational and non-educational settings to facilitate interaction with instructional materials and gain access to further learning assistance. Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, and others are among them.
In higher education, traditional learning methods are rapidly being phased away. Some universities and colleges provide students with voice assistants rather than printed handbooks or sophisticated websites for campus-related informational needs. According to a podcast by Cognilytica, Arizona State University is giving Amazon Alexa to various incoming first-year college students to supply them with much more frequent and concise information on their school needs.
The goal of these voice assistants is to provide answers to all typical concerns about campus needs while also being personalized for each student’s specific schedule and courses. This reduces the need for internal support while also lowering the cost of publishing college handbooks that are only utilized occasionally.
These voice assistant systems break up the monotony and provide students with exciting potential. In the following years, the use of this technology is projected to increase.
Assisting Instructors With Administrative Responsibilities
Teachers are given the job of managing the classroom environment, several organizational activities, and their educational responsibilities.
They are tasked with a variety of non-teaching responsibilities, such as grading essays and exam papers, dealing with the necessary paperwork, handling HR and personnel-related issues, arranging and managing classroom materials, booking and managing field trips, interacting and responding with parents, assisting with interaction and matters relating to the second language, keeping track of sick or absentees, and providing a learning environment.
Because educators spend half of their time on non-educational activities, AI tools and technologies have shown to be invaluable in assisting with back-office and task-related tasks such as grading and facilitating individualized replies for students. They can also handle mundane and monotonous paperwork, logistical, and personnel difficulties.
These AI systems may also schedule personal encounters with guardians and parents and feedback on common concerns and resource availability, allowing teachers to devote more time to children.
The AI tools and technologies improve educational institute efficiency by lowering operational expenses, increasing offers, and improving facility management. Many educational institutions may considerably enhance their efficiency, cut operating costs, get greater visibility into their income and expenses, and improve overall responsiveness by implementing clever AI-powered solutions.
In higher education, AI-powered systems are being utilized to decrease human bias during the admissions process and improve the process’s legitimacy, as these systems use pre-determined criteria to choose applicants. As a result, these AI tools and technologies have aided in enhancing admissions supervision.
Conclusion
In the not-too-distant future, Artificial Intelligence and machine learning are likely to play a crucial part in all educational experiences. The benefits and potential of AI have been demonstrated in various educational settings. It remains to be seen how the technology will empower and improve overall learning outcomes for all students.