Is AI here to replace human teachers or is it a teacher’s assistant?
Three years ago, UNESCO adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development where among pivotal goals there was ensuring equal access to quality education worldwide. But fast-paced tech development reshapes the role of a teacher in transmitting knowledge to younger generations. Many fear that AI-powered robots will soon entirely replace human teachers. So, are there any grounds for that?
Teacher’s role in an AI golden age
As Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said, we are witnessing a renaissance of AI technologies. And if not to get to the heart of the matter, machines taking over from humans in a large proportion of tasks may seem alarming. AI has already reduced the demand for workers doing mundane tasks, improved the standards of leaving and enabled humanity to solve complicated healthcare, logistics, security tasks that require informed decision-making. And that’s all for the better.
AI is not a Pandora’s box. Instead, it is predicted to create more jobs than it is going to eliminate. But many professions, such as teaching, indubitably require the human mind, not an artificial one. Thus, thought leaders, intellectuals, and savvy professionals trained to communicate ideas between humans and machines will become the most sought-after specialists.
When a teacher needs AI assistant
The workload dumped on a teacher often exceeds what is reasonable. A good and passionate teacher is expected to handle up to 30 students within a classroom, make them get down to learning, stop giggling and playing with gadgets, monitor student academic performance, grade homework, prepare lesson plans and on and on. These challenges are daunting, let alone teachers’ salaries. Too exhaustive and often underpaid, the teaching profession is losing popularity, which leads to teacher shortage worldwide. However, the tech revolution is on the way to transform teaching and learning as we know it today.
AI is on the mission to give a helping hand with planning, personalizing, visualizing, and facilitating the learning process. Let’s delve into the following AI-powered innovations that can assist teachers in making not only students but also learning process smarter.
Pushing classroom limitations
Traditional classrooms, blackboards, and manuals have already become a part of a retrograde understanding of the learning process. Tapping into technologies, teachers and students can go beyond the borders of what seemed possible before. Hopefully, soon the only limitation left in the educational area will be the desire of one or another person for self-development.
The use of AI-powered tools enables creating global classrooms. It brings new learning opportunities for students with visual or hearing impairments and speakers of other languages, allows teachers to consider different learning styles (making things easier for visual, auditory learners, etc.) and personalize learning as much as possible to improve academic performance.
To provide an example, a free plug-in for PowerPoint Presentation Translator creates subtitles in the real-time mode. Such technologies as Azure Cognitive Services, AI-powered speech recognition and translation allow students to follow a teacher in a most convenient way.
1. AI fuels Automated Speech Recognition and Natural Language Processing generates the script.
2. Machine Translation adapts the text for learners speaking different languages.
3. Students can listen or read the text displayed on the teacher’s screen or join the conversation via personal gadgets.
The capabilities this solution provides can’t be overstated, since ultimate personalization of learning and its global accessibility is what everybody craves for.
Robots for no learning in isolation
So many students worldwide are unable to attend school due to long-term illnesses. But AI is here to enable smart distant learning opportunities. Robots can replace students in classrooms ensuring real-time presence, even though it is physically impossible, and combating the isolation of a student from classmates and teachers. This technology allows students to get out of their hospital beds and control what is going on around using a tablet. Such robots have a connection with Microsoft Azure IoT Hub providing a student with all the video and audio connections and allowing participation in class discussions.
The educational robots market is growing with the goal to deliver affordable educational hardware and software solutions. However, the demand for this technology is restricted as depends largely on teachers’ readiness to incorporate robots in the learning process.
Teacher’s assistant
Automation of routine activities as part of the digital transformation is a present-day trend. And the educational area is not an exception. How much time teachers spend grading homework and preparing reports? A crazy amount. Would they re-plan their time to take advantage of new opportunities and bring their students to new heights? For sure, if only they had a chance to entrust someone else with tasks requiring little intellectual resources.
Utilizing Microsoft Azure and Machine Learning, such educational software as Gradescope can assist in grading student works or submissions, generating and sharing detailed analytics. An AI assistant can help teachers tailor learning plans according to different student’s needs. For instance, CENTURY Tech gathers data on every student’s learning progress. Analyzing data on each student in particulate, AI takes into account the details a human teacher could fail to notice or pull together. AI is able to provide data-based predictions of student’s success or failure, identify gaps in knowledge, highlight strengths and weaknesses and suggest where extra tutoring would be of help. Omniscience is a real power of AI.
The students of today will live and work in the future where AI will be a daily reality. Time for paper manuals and blackboards has passed: it’s time to expose students to cutting-edge technologies already at school. The modern learning process requires more interactivity and personalization to make knowledge more accessible all over the world regardless of a person’s place of living, language, health impairments, or learning abilities.
AI can easily become a students’ and teachers’ best friend providing personalized tutoring and assistance at the point of need. But what AI can’t do is to be a source of inspiration for learning, unlike a human teacher. The importance of empathy in the learning process is higher than it seems. And that is the main downside of educational AI-powered solutions, and that is why AI isn’t likely to entirely replace human teachers.
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