By Jacob Johnson
In a world of smartphones, self driving cars and autonomous robots, society is engulfed in technology, more specifically Artificial intelligence, which may be the future of education.
AI is used throughout daily life, so much so that it is typically not even thought about and AI might not be what you expect.
“When people think about artificial intelligence, most of the time they just think that means robots, but there are a lot of forms of AI,” said Chase Queen, an engineering major at Georgia Southern University. “To me artificial intelligence is giving a program a method to make decisions and learn from itself and those decisions that it makes.”
AI can be found in a variety of places including Smartphones, commercial airplanes and even email spam filters all have AI.
Most, if not all, smartphones are equipped with voice assistant software, which is one of the most commonly used forms of AI.
The use of Artificial Intelligence has also integrated itself into education. With new technologies such as AI assisted tutoring, students are able to receive personalized lesson plans to help them in areas they may need help in.
Queen said that AI being integrated into schools will help free up teachers from grading so they can spend more hands on time with their students. He went on to add that AI systems are designed to maximize efficiency in order to save “man hours” on things outside of teaching students.
Other forms of AI in education include testing systems, which helps to determine if the overall goal of a certain lesson is being achieved through the current curriculum, and if not, then how to improve it.
“One form of artificial intelligence I have researched is a program that can read essays from students and grade them based on certain criteria, which has shown to cut grading time in half,” said Jack Huesman, a mechanical engineering major at Georgia Southern.
When thinking about AI, there are a lot of movies and books that show them eventually taking over by learning far more than what their creators originally thought, but that is not something many scientists are too concerned about, at least not yet.
Huesman believes that humans will always hold more of a facilitator role, being there to guide the AI where it needs it and establishing a deeper human connection where it is needed.
Looking at the essay grading Huesman discussed, the AI would be able to show what was wrong or what could be improved, so that the teacher could then step in to help struggling students and provide deeper explanation where needed.
Implementing AI into the classroom is about helping teachers instruct, not to replace them, which is a concern for many, in industries where AI has been introduced, like self driving cars and delivery trucks.
Self driving cars are designed to eventually replace drivers, cutting payroll costs and reducing car accidents by up to eighty eight percent in some studies, however it would be much more difficult to replace teachers.
AI has also been implemented in the curriculum for learning different languages. A study by Blackburn (2020) showed that students are immersed into a simulated world where they would have to order food at a restaurant in another country or even find transportation to the hotel they are staying at, all in order to help guide their learning of the language and culture.
Cheryl Aasheim has been working in the information technology field for several years and since her time at Georgia Southern, she has researched and reviewed studies on how information systems can help in education. Her research has guided policies to make educating more efficient.
Aashiem believes AI can be involved in education but believes there are challenges that can come up with how you implement it into educators routines because if an educator feels overwhelmed or threatened they may reject it.
AI may one day change what education looks like, however for now, changes are much slower but professors like Aashiem and students believe AI will one day revolutionize the way we teach and learn.