AI IN SCHOOLS - WHAT'S NEXT?

How is your school dealing with AI – or planning to? Are your staff using it already? Are your students using it in their assessment tasks and assignments? Will you allow them routinely to use it? How will you manage AI-based plagiarism if you detect it? How will you detect it? Are you developing policies to manage AI’s impact on your teaching and on your students’ learning?

Will you deliberately and intentionally teach your students how to utilise AI’s potential? Will you teach them to be aware of its potential to cause harm? How will you help them to be savvy, honest scholars in their exploitation of AI’s undoubted advantages?

So many questions!

According to acknowledged futurist and author of Generative AI in Practice - 100+ Amazing Ways Generative Artificial Intelligence is Changing, Bernard Marr asserts that AI is going to change education (and everything else) in many ways. ?Far from wringing his hands, however, quite frankly, Marr is excited by the prospect, suggesting that over the next ten years, one of the most profound effects of the adoption of AI in schools will be the rise of personalised learning.

What Marr calls AI-Driven Adaptive Learning will provide teachers with access to tools that accurately assess individual student’s abilities and which enable teachers to differentiate among individual students’ preferred learning styles to create hyper-personalised curriculums which are actually tailored to individuals’ requirements. In short, AI offers teachers the potential to differentiate curriculum in highly granular ways – to the level of individual students - day by day, subject by subject, course by course, lesson by lesson. As Marr points out, this potential will revolutionise classroom learning, especially in contexts such as in the developing world, where the number of learners in both traditional classrooms and in online environments is climbing exponentially.

Marr posits that today’s AI Tutoring Platforms will morph into flexible AI mentors, which will be able to understand individual psychological states and distinguish individual behavioural patterns to determine the best teaching strategies and even provide emotional support and encouragement. Moreover, AI-driven Adaptive Learning will be able to provide access to targeted individual student well-being provision, accessing AI-discerned insights derived from individual student biometric data to help students – and by extension, their teachers - to recognise the best time to learn and when they should take a break to rest.

Assessment strategies too will change, Marr claims. He believes adaptive gamification, for example, drawing on already-existing sophisticated computer game programming, will challenge learners to improve themselves by dynamically engaging and assessing them throughout the classroom learning process. This capacity to discern whether students actually understand and can apply their new learning perhaps might put an end to the need for the stress-inducing routine of cramming for end-of-term exams.

Marr is confident that personalisation at this level has the potential to help us learn better and attain better educational outcomes – an advantage few teachers will fail to support. No-one doubts the effectiveness of one-on-one teaching. How hard we strive now in our class-sized groups of students to individualise our instructional techniques as far as possible! Yet none of us is unaware of the inefficiencies of sub-optimal whole-group instruction. Marr rightly recognises the big challenges around privacy and questions over the role of human teachers as they find their role transitioning from information providers to learning facilitators, saying care must be taken not to overlook the importance of human oversight and mentorship. Teaching remains crucially and fundamentally dependent upon a caring, open, authentic relationship between teacher and pupil. No machine of whatever sophistication can ever take the place of a human teacher!

At the same time, as educators we are profoundly aware, and would agree with Marr’s claim, that in today’s fast-moving world, a model where we graduate our youth fully prepared for a single, lifelong career is simply no longer valid. Technology is reshaping the world into one where ongoing training, up-skilling and re-skilling are a necessity – and education is transforming to cater to this, Marr adds, stating that in addition to artificial intelligence, online learning and breakthrough technologies like virtual and augmented reality (AR/VR) already play an increasingly important role. They will all become more integrated into the way our young people study and learn over the next decade.

So, what else besides AI is coming? Marr charts what will be the dominant trends in education and educational technology (EdTech) by 2035. It may seem a long way away, but Marr says understanding them now will likely help us as educators to prepare for a future that, thanks to technology, will look very different from today.

Immersive Virtual Learning Environments

By 2035, Marr asserts, the distinction between the physical and digital worlds will be increasingly blurred, and this is as true in education as anywhere. He allows that there will still be schools as we know them, and that most children and teenagers will still be attending a bricks-and-mortar school. Alternatives will be well established, however, for those who can’t attend a school, as well as for adults and lifelong learners, he says.

What does this look like?

VR and AR technology will be far more accessible than it is today, with lightweight and affordable devices making it easy for anyone to interact with tutors and fellow learners as if they were in the same room, Marr enthuses, adding, highly immersive virtual classrooms and campuses will mean students – of all ages – will be able to participate in sophisticated simulations, engage in complex scientific experiments or explore ancient civilizations first-hand.

Articulating a social equity concern, Marr indicates that the maturing of technologies that exist today will democratise access to education for those who aren’t fortunate enough to live in areas with good schools and colleges. However, he cautions, educators will face the challenge of balancing this with concerns such as increased social isolation and the impact of extended screen-time on developing minds. As is the case with AI in the classroom, there will still be a need for teachers to foster and nurture the personal teaching and learning relationship, but at the same time, they will be able to supplement their delivery of curriculum content with the enriching possibilities of AI and immersive learning.

Neurotechnology And Accelerated Learning – Hacking The Human Brain For Better Learning

Marr acknowledges the sinister overtones of this sub-heading. As he says, drawing on neurotechnology is very science fiction. He goes on to explain that already, brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are under development, the most famous example being Elon Musk’s Neuralink experiments.? He urges us not to worry, however: we probably won’t all have to have chips implanted in our heads to benefit, as non-invasive forms of BCI have also been in development for some time.

The first-use cases in education are likely to involve assisting students with disabilities, Marr continues, which will enabling them to control their devices with thoughts. This will enhance their ability to communicate and take part in learning activities.

Within ten years, he goes on, they could also be used to understand the brain’s learning processes better, potentially speeding up our ability to ingest, retain and recall information. By monitoring the electrical feedback generated by the brain, researchers believe?it may be possible to optimise our ability to learn information and even develop comlex skills, such as playing a musical instrument.

Will this really be mainstream within ten years? I hear you asking. Marr says a lot depends on the outcome of research that’s going on today. Just as importantly, Marr points out that implementing neuro-technology will come down to how society is able to answer questions around the ethical and security implications of developing technology that can literally read our thoughts! Educators need to enjoin in these socio-ethical conversations.

A Lifetime Of Learning

The concept of a “job for life” might have seemed normal to our parents’ generation, but it’s obsolete today, Marr attests, adding, students graduating ten years from now will be under no illusion that they are equipped with the skills and knowledge they will need for a lifelong career. They will also need to know that the career from which they will retire probably does not exist yet. Today’s students will need to be agile, flexible learners who can master new skills and knowledge quickly and confidently, and their schooling needs to equip them to be adaptable to continuous change. As Marr observes, the accelerating pace of digital transformation will make it necessary for those who want rewarding careers to adapt to new models of ongoing, continuous education. Marr argues that education systems too will need to adapt, and adapt quickly, to engage with and support this digital transformation, at least by offering teachers and school leaders alike more training and professional learning courses and programs that will involve on-the-job training and opportunities for up-skilling.

Marr reports that large corporates, such as Amazon, are already offering degree-level apprenticeship programs, and this will become more common as employers seek to develop workforces equipped with the skills they need. Opportunities will involve online learning, modular learning and immersive virtual learning, Marr states. To these will be added micro-learning and nano-learning, delivering education in bite-sized chunks, capable of being rolled out on a “just-in-time” basis to meet the changing needs of industries and professions.

To cater for this, Marr sees education providers offering subscription services, like online streaming services, which will allow people to dip in and out of schooling in accordance with their personal and individual needs. There will always be a need for STEM education, Marr reassures us, noting that as computers become increasingly proficient at routine technical tasks, more learning will be focused on developing human-centric “soft” skills that will increase our chances of remaining relevant as human teachers in the era of AI and automation.

Will you be ready?

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