Man vs Machine in Ed-Tech: Digital Dronacharya?

As?AI/ML engulfs the world, will machines replace the teachers as well? Anyone who has tasted the stock market knows well how we humans can be over-bullish or over-bearish. On this topic, there are people on both the sides. Let’s digest the topic as follows!

Is Lecturing good use of Human Effort?

I was walking with a professor in IIT through the corridors as he headed to take a class. He stopped at the xerox room, took out some badly tattered papers to take xerox. I asked, “what are these papers, sir?”?“I made these notes for my class, ten years back. The new xerox will last for 10 more years”, the professor chuckled.

If machines are supposed to remove mundane repetitive tasks, lecturing is surely one of them. A teacher utters the same Newton’s Laws of motion batches after batches, year after year. Just record it and play!?

Infact, machines will be able to map the intellect and learning habits of each student and then provide him with highly personalized lectures. Passionate educators (like Eva Moskowitz) very well know the importance of personalization.

Doubt-Solving: Individually Different, Statistically Same.

Every student?is different & so are their doubts. No machine can answer all these infinite types of doubts. Human-teachers are must. Is it really true?

If you take 1000 (say) students, all will have different doubts. But if you take another set of 1000 students, 80% of their doubts will be the same as the first group. If you take a 3rd set of 1000 students, 90% of their doubts will be the same as that of the first two groups combined. So on.

In reality, once your sample size of students is really huge, very rarely, a new doubt will pop up. This practically finite number of doubts can be handled by machines.

Discipline & Guidance: Kite without Thread

Teachers to students act as banks to rivers. They discipline students to study regularly, to pay appropriate attention to different topics, etc. Why can't machines do this??

Machines can create a schedule for the students. There can be reminders before the schedule. Further, if the schedule is missed, there can be more reminders. A?machine can also use facial emotion recognition when a student is studying in front of the system and judge his attentiveness, etc. (interesting article by Vivek Wadhwa). Great. But, wait a minute!

Suppose you decide to get up at 5am daily to do yoga. An alarm based machine?is supposed to get you up. How often do people get up? Now if your friend or dad comes to wake you up, chances are much higher. Isn’t it? A survey says that around 70% of Britishers hit the snooze button. When it comes to disciplining us, machines have not been as efficient as humans in most cases.

A flying kite tied to a thread has value. Once the thread is gone, it's a useless piece of paper.

So, you will see human-teachers acting as a thread for students. Though they will be using the above mentioned technology tools like reminders, etc. as an assistance. Plus, human-teachers will guide students in group activities, practical simulations, etc.

Assessment/Practice: An Intense Dive in Brain

Machines can assess a student on?a very granular level. Let me give an example. What's the difference between a good to-be-scientist and a good to-be-engineer? Both have very good analytical and observation skills. In the current human based system, both Newton, the scientist & Tesla, the engineer will score high in exams and appear to be the same.

Suppose two students with the same high analytic and observation skills undergo a time bound session of problem solving. The Newton will take a lot of time on a particularly tough problem till he solves it absolutely. The Tesla rather skips the tough problem and moves to the next.?

An engineer is more practical and goal oriented. A scientist is more inclined towards complete clarity. Machines can pick such subtle nuances easily and massively help in shaping careers.

Also, machines can assess on a continuous basis as students learn. As it’s impractical for human based assessments to be continuous, they are discreet. This leads to one ‘judgement day’ deciding the future.

Well...

Dronacharya should be partially digital, partially human. Seems perfect! Or is there something missing? Let us please think more.

There is one more element that a teacher brings in. An ideal teacher inspires, provokes, stimulates, gives vision, touches the soul of the students.

Think about the relationship between a mother and a child. Even if someone else provides the child with food, clothes, security, etc, can he/she match the mother. No! There is something similar between a great teacher and a student, as well. Parents and teachers are the two most important people in life: the former brings you from the sky to the earth, the later helps you rise from the earth to the heights of sky. (Renowned MIT prof Anant Agarwal mentions amazing story of his inspiring teacher)

But unfortunately, this element will remain undone in tech-cum-human solutions to teaching. I wish, one day AI/ML will evolve so much, beyond current imagination, that it will mimic even this for every student.

Please share your stories about great educators/teachers in comment section. Also suggest if you will like to add something to what I said.