Educators need to plan for an AI future
Will AI take my job? This question has been front of mind for many educators since ChatGPT exploded into public consciousness in late 2022.
Now that (some) of the hype is dying down, and people are realising the limitations of generative AI tools for learning design, it’s clear that generative AI will augment the work of educators and not render them obsolete. But, in a fast-evolving tech landscape, teachers, lecturers, learning design instructors, and those invested in the future of education need to upskill, learning about the potential and pitfalls of AI for education. The time to do that is now.
Image credit: Google DeepMind/Pexels.
Last night, I joined a fascinating dialogue on the role of AI in EdTech, organised by the EdTEch Collective and Injini. People across the EdTech sector in Cape Town shared their experiences with AI and thoughts about the future.
Six World Cafe-styled tables, each focused on a specific question about AI in education, generated deep discussions. After rotating through these tables, a few things crystallised for me.
AI will augment the work of educators and learning designers. Creating engaging lessons, however, is not about passing everything off to ChatGPT with a quick prompt like ‘Design me a course on sustainability.’ That will likely end in a mess. Educators and learning designers need to understand what generative AI tools can and can’t do, upskill on how to write effective prompts and, importantly, be sharp with fact-checking. It’s no secret that ChatGPT and its chatbot kin are prone to ‘hallucinations.’
AI has great potential to personalise learning experiences. With adaptive learning technology, AI can monitor student progress in real-time, analysing individual students' performance and identifying strengths and weaknesses. It can then tailor learning material to their needs and learning styles and share real-time feedback to help them learn.
AI can save instructors time, freeing them up to focus on the human aspects of teaching. Anyone who has spent hours grading assignments or dealing with manual data entry into lengthy spreadsheets knows that the admin side of education can be taxing. AI tools have the potential to take over much of the work that goes into assessment and evaluation, freeing educators up to focus on the creative and human side of teaching.
There are things that AI can’t do. It can’t exhibit empathy, at least in the way we understand this human attribute. It seems there is something about human connection that makes students more responsive and accountable to human instructors.
The discussions also raised important questions that don’t have easy answers:
What does ‘academic integrity’ mean in an age where students can ask ChatGPT to write their essays?
How will the current model of assessment change with the rise of AI? What, exactly, should schools and universities assess when learners can use AI tools to answer assignments?
AI and education is a fast-moving space. To me, the main challenge is for educators to catch up with what’s happening now, while applying a futures thinking lens to plan for how things could be in five to 10 years. That involves thinking beyond the structure and function of our current education systems.
Planning for an AI future in education requires exploring the possibilities AI provides and remaining open to re-imagining concepts like the classroom, assignments, and the role of the teacher. It also means carefully considering the value of human connection and how to help that flourish in a world of algorithms and chatbots.
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Brendon Bosworth is a communications specialist and science communication trainer with an ever-growing interest in the role of AI in education. He is the principal consultant at Human Element Communications.
