Improving Education with Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to transform education by enhancing its quality and enriching the teaching and learning experience through personalized learning, supporting teachers in their diverse tasks, streamlining administrative duties, offering insights, and many other benefits.
As AI advances, personalized learning takes on new dimensions and possibilities. Educators can provide more relevant and engaging experiences for each student. This translates into personalized study plans that consider individual interests, strengths, and challenges. Intelligent tutoring systems (available 24/7) and AI-driven e-learning platforms can adapt educational content to each student’s pace and learning style, automatically adjusting the difficulty level based on the student’s performance, ensuring they are constantly challenged without feeling overwhelmed. These systems can provide instant and personalized assessments, allowing students to understand and correct their mistakes in real-time. This immediate feedback is crucial for effective learning, as it enables them to adjust their study strategies dynamically and responsively. Personalization makes learning more interesting and meaningful, helping to keep students engaged and committed to their own progress.
AI also facilitates access to a wide range of educational resources: videos, games, articles, and hands-on activities. This enriches the learning environment. Chatbots and virtual assistants can provide personalized educational support, helping to develop skills such as critical thinking, problem-solving, collaboration, and creativity.
AI not only benefits students but also supports teachers in their daily activities. It assists in creating personalized teaching materials and allows for the analysis of large amounts of data to monitor students’ progress in real time, identifying performance patterns and adjusting teaching strategies as necessary. Administrative and academic tasks, such as class scheduling, enrollment management, evaluation, forecasting course demand, grading exams, and analyzing essays, can all be improved. By automating administrative tasks like grading and assessing assignments, AI frees up valuable time for educators to focus on creating more effective lesson plans and engaging directly with students. In summary, “every teacher could have an incredibly intelligent artificial teaching assistant,” says Sal Khan, CEO of Khan Academy.
ChatGPT is already a type of virtual assistant that can be utilized by educational institutions to meet these needs. It can answer questions, providing explanations, definitions, historical contexts, scientific explanations, and more. In research, it can offer additional information, clarify concepts, and provide practical examples. In tasks and projects, it can suggest ideas and guide on how to proceed. In language learning, it offers interactive practice and translations in multiple languages. In exploring personal interests, it can discuss topics, recommend books, movies, and music. To get the most benefit from ChatGPT, it’s essential to formulate clear and specific questions, such as the following prompts: “summarize a book,” “translate a text from Portuguese to English,” “write a poem about love,” “summarize the main causes of the French Revolution,” “explain the consequences of climate change on marine ecosystems,” “solve an equation,” “what is the best city to live in Europe?” “suggest a list of teaching resources for teaching the solar system to 5th-grade students.” Social studies students can use ChatGPT to write alternate realities for history and then discuss the outcomes as a class. Science students can adopt the voice of a famous scientist and then engage in a stimulating conversation about their discoveries. These are just a few examples of applications.
The revolution of education with the use of AI is just beginning. However, it already demands that educators are properly trained, ensuring that its use is ethical and responsible.
In 1913, Thomas Edison believed that cinema would replace books and teachers. It’s wiser to believe what Dr. Reich, a professor at MIT, says: “People always expect technology to change how everything happens. However, it’s more realistic to expect that technology will improve learning by helping schools do better what they’ve been doing for generations.”