Prioritizing People Over AI: Lessons Learned from Navigating the Latest Education Hype Cycle

Forty years ago, when I was just starting in this great industry as a sales rep in Texas, eminent educator and computer scientist Seymour Papert predicted this about computers: “There won’t be schools in the future…I think the computer will blow up the school. That is, the school defined as something where there are classes, teachers running exams, people structured in groups by age, following a curriculum.”

While this bold prediction has clearly not come true, computers have become essential to the way most people learn today. They provide countless useful purposes in education, so many that you almost forget they are there – providing back-office functions, delivering engaging content, giving educators and students near-limitless access to information and automating tasks that gobbled up their time in the past. But the structure of our schools and the important teacher-student relationship have endured.

As we navigate the latest hype cycle around AI, we should look at the successes and failures of the past to manage our expectations for the future.

Here’s a look at what we’ve learned so far.

Building solutions for educators and students

One thing we know from learning science is that education is a social endeavor.

As we consider how to apply AI in new ways, we should focus on how to support the two constituencies directly involved in the learning process: the educator and the learner. How can we help educators focus on the tasks that matter most and best support students?? And how can we create more powerful learning experiences for students that improve outcomes and prepare them for careers and their lives ahead?

According to our 2024 McGraw Hill Global Education Insights Report , educators believe AI will have a positive impact on education in two top areas: reducing time spent on administrative tasks and the ability to personalize learning experiences for each student.

Education technology has already helped in these areas tremendously. Today, college students access almost everything they need for their courses through online learning management systems and do most of their studying on laptops and other devices. Yet these tools have not disrupted the powerful routines of learning: the educator-student interactions, the collaboration in classrooms and more.

Smarter ways of using data to support educators and free up their time

Educators are busy, and the task of supporting dozens, if not hundreds, of students on their learning journeys is daunting. Technology has provided efficiencies for educators over the years, but AI can do even more. And GenAI creates new opportunities.

In the future, you’ll see enhancements to help educators manage assessment and intervention for large numbers of students. AI can quickly sort through the complicated and powerful data generated by student applications and serve it up to educators in actionable and insightful ways. It can also save educators time on instructional tasks that were previously challenging to do at scale.?

Accelerating personalized learning experiences for each student

For many years, edtech has been able to leverage technology and types of AI to create personalized pathways through content and curriculum. GenAI provides some exciting new opportunities to do this in a more powerful way, and in new domains like reading and writing.

Imagine reading an ebook and being able to ask for a summary of a section, or instantly getting a short quiz on a chapter to test your knowledge and decide if you can skip ahead and focus your studying elsewhere. Our new AI Reader technology, released this fall and receiving positive feedback, does exactly that. Other applications could re-write text at different reading levels depending on a student’s needs or provide translations for students who are still learning English. McGraw Hill’s new Writing Assistant tool for grades 6-12 helps students through the short-form writing process, giving them advice on how to start or nudging them toward more effective strategies.

The possibilities are near-limitless, and AI can help nudge us even closer to the personalized learning vision those of us in ed-tech have pursued for decades.

The bottom line: Don’t turn AI into a solution in search of a problem

AI can be a powerful problem-solver, but we shouldn’t rush to release tools simply for the sake of innovation.

Over the years, I’ve seen mistakes in our industry, and money spent by schools on technologies that might seem exciting but aren’t solving the everyday problems that students and educators face.

Listening to educators and students is crucial. Sometimes AI is not the answer. But in other cases, it might help solve a previously unsolvable problem.

Planning for the future of learning when AI is everywhere

AI is becoming more and more embedded in the way we live and work. In the future, companies will want to hire professionals who can take advantage of these tools in creative ways and who are comfortable in our AI-enabled reality. So, it’s important to connect the dots from education to the professional world of the future.

Additionally, we should be transparent for students and educators about how AI works and what the benefits are. Educators should not shy away from talking about AI – and education technology companies should help by providing transparency around how the technology functions, and resources so educators can help students learn about it as well.

The future of education will be more AI-enabled than ever. But as we envision and prepare for that future, let’s remember what’s most important. Students and educators. People.