Week 7 – How will the future of education be shaped by AI
Introduction
AI which is Artificial Intelligence refers to the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, especially computer systems. It include reasoning and learning.
AI is used for accomplishing tasks such as speech recognition, natural language processing, visual perception, decision-making, and language translation, that explains it’s great involvement in education , because it has the ability to think, (process data )in form of questions and give result especially the generative AI such as the chatGpT.
The future shape of education by AI.
I will like to state personally that AI is a laudable breakthrough in the use of technology, honestly the world have not experienced anything like this before, it is interesting, fascinating, exciting, educative, and it’s gradually turning to a must have partner.
AI in education is geared towards giving education a very bright future,it is expected to change education greatly, let’s tap into the wealth of knowledge we gained last week while discussing the Edtech investors purpose of Education, it can be seen that AI will improve in the future:
1. Individual learning: which is students learning at their own pace ,AI will help students create their learning path,use instructions that will suit a particular child to make them learn better.
2. Assess student, give feedback and make recommendations based on the feedback, goals and interest which will be so useful in making personal decisions about the person in question, this is also useful in giving life long learning and upskilling.
3. Global collaboration and culture transfer: AI platforms can facilitate collaboration between students and schools , even between teachers in a school and other schools, British council have been doing this very well in their connecting classrooms programs, they have connected many Lagos school to other schools abroad where teachers collaborate, share ideas and knowledge, this has been yielding positive results, so AI will make this bigger and better.
4. Enhanced accessibility: to me this is one very big claim of the powers behind AI education, that AI will make education assessible to everyone, in another words it will break the inequality gap in education, even as a student in Nigeria you can assess what the students in UK are studying, to them this is great, AI will bridge the inequality gap in education.
Truly AI is set to revolutionize education, this is so beautiful and fantastic but to me AI will not only revolutionize education positively it will surely do that too negatively.
My View
I will like to analyse this using the 21st century skills in education , these are the skills that education should give her recipients after completing their studies, the skills include critical thinking and problems solving, collaboration and communication, creativity and imagination, value education and digital education.
Of all the above mentioned skill the only one that is well catered for by AI is the digital education.
If one of the purposes of education to develop critical thinking and problem solving in students, and AI is now doing the thinking for students,I see that skill gradually fading out, it will lead to people’s inability to think critically, there will be no originality, AI will silence human voice in the future , it will lead to over dependency on AI and the purpose of education will be defeated.
Let’s just imagine giving an assignment to a class and the next thing they all do is to ask AI for the solution, it actually rob the students of the experience of thinking critically to solve the problem.
Collaboration and communication skills is another thing that will reduce in education because of AI, although AI promised to connect students to the world in which they can interact with other people virtually, but what happens to physical interaction, what happens to some ideas that are better shared on the round table, what happens to what we gain from ourselves by physically being together which is the hidden curriculum, this was extensively discussed in week one, and truly so many great skills are learnt which is not in the curriculum through the hidden curriculum, I’m so sure those that designed the curriculum of the online digital education program in the university of Edinburgh knows the importance of this physical collaboration and communication that is why they all want the students to be together in Accra physically and not virtually because they know how important it is, but AI will rob students of this experience.
Creativity and imagination skills will gradually drop, students will not see any reason to stress themselves on a design you can just tell AI to create for you at the snap of your fingers.
Value education may not even have a place in AI , in our tutorial during the week it was discussed that AI is not well grounded in other topics such as social science as it is in STEM which is science , technology, engineering and mathematics. AI will not be so ideal in teaching value skills.
Conclusion
To me the future of education will be affected by AI both positively and negatively, it will transform the learning experience, empower people to get knowledge in personalized ways, education will become more inclusive and adaptive. Since we can’t do anything about the invasion of AI (I see the industry getting bigger and bigger because of the powerful investors behind it ), we should just have in mind the real reason of education,we should not forget that the student getting better should be our focus as an educator, and so continue to impart the 21st century skills in our students, let us remember that those people that developed AI used , and are still using these skills to create the AI that is now tending to water down this skills in the life of our students.
We should be guided.
References
Huw, D.,Rebecca, E.,January, K. & Ben, W. (2022). Investigating the financial power brokers behind Edtech
https://educationdatafutures.digitalfuturescommission.org.uk/essays/competing-interests-in-education-data/investigation-financial-power-brokers-edtech
Ayesha, p.(2024). Hidden curriculum sociology
https://www.britishcouncil.hk/sites/default/files/21st_century_skills_0.pdf
Thanks for this Olubukola. I see a growing confidence in your posts so please take my feedback here as trying to encourage you to take that even further in subsequent posts and on the final essay.
‘Global collaboration and culture transfer: AI platforms can facilitate collaboration between students and schools , even between teachers in a school and other schools, British council have been doing this very well in their connecting classrooms programs, they have connected many Lagos school to other schools abroad where teachers collaborate, share ideas and knowledge, this has been yielding positive results, so AI will make this bigger and better.’
Thanks for sharing that Olubukola and good to know that you are engaged with the Connecting Classroom programme. It is a good one to be sure and I would agree that this might (or should?) be one of the more appropriate uses of technology in schools: broadening perspectives through these sorts of exchanges. This is an expansive use of technology rather than one that diminishes the teaching profession. I work with this organisation a bit and they do similar things (https://learning.jwl.global/en/public-wbt). The role of AI in facilitating these connections is again a productive one so good observation here.
‘If one of the purposes of education to develop critical thinking and problem solving in students, and AI is now doing the thinking for students,I see that skill gradually fading out, it will lead to people’s inability to think critically, there will be no originality, AI will silence human voice in the future , it will lead to over dependency on AI and the purpose of education will be defeated.
Let’s just imagine giving an assignment to a class and the next thing they all do is to ask AI for the solution, it actually rob the students of the experience of thinking critically to solve the problem.’
I would agree that an overreliance on AI will generate less than ideal results educationally, I wonder if AI provides us in education the opportunity to rethink how we structure learning and through which activities. I am thinking a bit of assessment here. If AI allows students to complete exams and essays without working through the problem on their own, drafting their own work, and thinking critically, then is there an opportunity here to rethink assessment?
Assessment is a particularly complex intersection of discourse, policy, practice, and imaginaries (Williamson, B., & Komljenovic, J. (2023). Investing in imagined digital futures: the techno-financial ‘futuring’of edtech investors in higher education. Critical Studies in Education, 64(3), 234-249). Everyone points to rigour, outcomes, and evaluation of assessment, but rarely as to how it might adapt or evolve. I would agree with you that there are dangers here in it does need to change but it is often the hardest thing to change in education (changing teaching practice is considerably easier as it isn’t directly tied to a metric like assessment might be). So in the face of AI, and perhaps using AI as inspiration, what might alternative assessments look like? How might they engage students’ imaginations and criticality simultaneously? How can they remain authentic in the face of AI ‘and the possible erosion of authenticity? Are any of these approaches able to stimulate alternative thinking in this respect? https://www.de.ed.ac.uk/mscde/showcase. Assessment is such a bit topic but AI really does make it necessary to revisit what we are asking students to do; otherwise ‘creativity and imagination skills will gradually drop, students will not see any reason to stress themselves on a design you can just tell AI to create for you at the snap of your fingers’ (Dosumu, 2024!).
Also, just to note that these are the author’s first names, not last names so best to practice doing the correct citation format (we use Harvard referencing on this course) now as it will be graded on the final assignment: Huw, D.,Rebecca, E.,Janja, K. & Ben, W., (2022). Investigating the financial power brokers behind Edtech.
I look forward to chatting later this week!
Thanks Michael for your comments, it’s always both challenging and educative, I’m learning a lot from you and hope to be as good as you are or almost, you always challenge me to do better, and I’m really enjoying it, thank you, I will improve.
Looking forward to chatting you this week.