Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Grace Gadston All images from Freepik

So many of us are struggling to create products that you never knew you needed, something that will make our lives more seamless and instantaneous, products that will make us successful, and unfortunately ones that we will likely throw away and upgrade at least once within the next 10 years.

“If all the insects were to disappear from the earth, within 50 years all life on earth would end. If all the humans were to disappear from the earth, within 50 years all forms of life would flourish.” — Jonas Salk

It’s theories like this that make me think, “Do we really need more stuff?” should we not be concentrating our efforts on sustaining our future instead of designing more accessories? Well, in my book it’s the future that needs redesigning and I think a good place to start is with education. In particular, generations of kids who will forever help shape our planet, and seeing as though we have entered the ever growing world of intelligent products, I don’t understand why we haven’t pushed to make education more intelligent already.

After some pretty serious thinking, Id like to share a few areas where I personally see an intelligent system could be useful within Education for all competencies.

Our future potential

Our future is in the hands of the kids in school right now, so it blows my mind that it’s not in our best and main interest to ensure they meet their full potential.

With the advances of artificial intelligence being able to collect, sort and learn from huge amounts of data we could start to reap the benefits that help our future generations learn in a much more seamless and captivating manor that’s tailored to their specific needs.

In the 1980s one of the first AI systems was invented by a duo called Brown and Burton. The system BUGGY was made to teach basic addition and subtraction and source the mistakes students made to create a library of wrong answers, leaving the system with the potential to offer the learner any other method of answering as the most common wrong approaches had been recorded. Many more projects have been designed since this one, you can read more about this subject through this Pearson article.

If this was created over 30 years ago, just think of the possibilities and technological advances that would have been born since then. I think this shift into ‘intelligent education’ is inevitable and it’s up to us to ensure it’s delivered efficiently.

Learning is a two way street

Unless the class you’re teaching consists of only 8 students, how do you presume you will be attentive to all their needs and worries? It’s pretty difficult to do and unfortunately many students will let their problems slide under the rug if they’re not seen quickly enough.

It’s true that some kids just don’t want to like school and aren’t interested in learning, but in many cases I think that’s more the curriculum and teachers issue than it is the children’s. Learning is a two way street and needs to be rewarding for there to be any interest in the first place. For rewards to work teachers needs to know the problem areas and strengths of each student, but in cases where you’re class is possibly 100, that’s nearly impossible to do well.

A possible way around this common problem, is to introduce an AI Assistant who helps both professors, teachers, TA’s and students. Here’s an example, An AI Assistant is tracking the students progress via assessing their written work, typing speeds, eye movement, heart rate, attention span etc. The assistant can offer guidance and instant feedback to the student during this process. From this an immediate individual and full class analysis report is provided to the teachers for analytics on what and who requires more work and where. If you are interested in reading more about this subject, I would start with Venture Beat’s easy-to-digest article on AI in Education.

I don’t blame them, their Human

I wasn’t a fan of school because I was never any good at it, which seemed fairly normal as we don’t tend to like the things we don’t excel in. Daydreaming seemed much more appealing to me than a teacher unenthusiastically regurgitating what I considered to be irrelevant dribble. I remember telling my parents,

“I don’t see the point in listening to a man talk about something I am not interested in. It’s a waste of my time”

I can’t help wonder if my school life would have been different if I had a teacher who enthusiastically recited their lessons, gave a damn if their students felt the same way or not and was attentive towards the many methods we all liked to learn in.

I remember class as ‘whichever way the teacher explains it, is how you will be told to learn.’ But my argument is ‘what if I don’t see it that way?’ What if I am confused by their metaphors and require some extra help in deconstructing the questions or problems so I can understand it too?

I think a part of why my confidence was hit as a young student was because my teachers let their emotions and temper boil to the surface sometimes. I don’t blame them, their human, but at the time I was weary about making Mrs.Mackaroy or Mrs.Newton frustrated again that I remember sinking down in my seat at the slow table, to avoid attention. But that’s just one child and one use case, there are so many more that still need addressing too.

In this day and age miscommunications like that are becoming less and less acceptable as we are collectively coming to understand the repercussions that follow. We have the resources and technology to aid these situations, to minimize confusion or embarrassment and enhance feedback that can be tailored to individual learners, just as we’ve seen with the conception of BUGGY in the 1980’s.

To wrap up

I’d love to see learners of all ages and abilities being inspired and pushed to their potential in a seamless and equal manor. I’d love to see teachers and professors learning from their students and gaining a greater understanding of what they all really need.

If you’re going to spend 10 -25years in education, don’t you want to know you’ll be getting the best service and experience out of it? I know I do.

Here are some great resources if you’re interested in learning more,

IAIED Conferences. Here you can explore authors and professors as well as conferences around the world on this subject.

Intelligence Unleashed. A fantastic pamphlet from Pearsons research division.

Forbes. Always great with articles and here’s an easy break down of AI in Ed. A good quick read.

Feel free to leave comments or message me if you have something to share or have different opinions too! Id love to hear your thoughts and experiences 🙂

Could AI systems help in Education? was originally published in Prototyping: From UX to Front End on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Could AI systems help in Education?

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