The future of AI in education: pioneering a new era of learning

Let’s see what AI has to offer the educational sector.

Academic research shows that students who receive individual tutoring outperform 98% of their classmates who get the traditional classroom education. Tailoring the syllabus to each student is unrealistic in the traditional settings, but it’s reasonable if we consider the future of education with AI.

With artificial intelligence, educators can offer personalized learning pathways and provide students with tailored content and feedback based on their academic performance and learning goals. AI can not only customize the material but also accommodate certain disabilities, learning speed, and educational background. If a student is well-versed in one topic, the AI model can skip the basic lessons and move to more advanced content. AI can even analyze student performance and recommend the most suitable learning style.

Personalized content is also important for businesses that want to onboard or educate employees. If students at school have a more or less unified background, employees at companies are much more diverse in their skills and knowledge.

Real-life example

Just recently, ITRex had the chance to see how generative AI can reshape the future of education.

We designed and built a generative AI sales training platform for an eLearning startup. The client was planning to market this solution to companies that want to educate newly hired sales reps. Companies can upload different types of documents to this platform; the solution analyzes the provided materials and generates a personalized learning plan tailored to the candidate’s CV. The platform can also create quizzes, give feedback, and then generate more custom learning materials to address each sales rep’s weaknesses.

You can learn more about the pros and cons of generative AI and how it differs from classic artificial intelligence on our blog.

The traditional classroom approach to education lacks practice, and it rarely allows students to upskill individually. So, how will AI affect education in the future? AI-powered chatbots, interactive mobile apps, and virtual assistants can help students master hard and soft skills, like speaking a foreign language, diagnosing a patient, or leveling up their communication and problem-solving abilities.

Students who are embarrassed to speak a foreign language, for example, can tame their anxiety by conversing with AI-powered chatbots. The chatbots—now accessible through popular language learning apps like Duolingo—allow learners to go through real-life communicative scenarios and prepare for offline conversations.

Real-life examples

AI helps people adjust their skills to the prevailing circumstances. For instance, in Africa it’s rather hard to find formal employment, and 80% of the population relies on informal gigs. An African educational tech startup, Kabakoo Academies, wanted to help the population switch to the self-employed mindset. The company developed an AI-powered platform that assigns a virtual mentor to every participant who wants to improve their freelancing skills. Kabakoo reports that its learners’ incomes increase by an average of 44% six months after completing the education plan.

Let’s look at an example where AI helps with practical training. In healthcare, the technology enables medical students to practice surgeries in a simulated environment. Ontario’s Children Hospital collaborated with Toronto’s SickKids and Ottawa’s Carleton University to build an AI-powered laparoscopic simulator that students can use to learn how to hold the tools and perform the surgery. This simulator also generates real-time feedback as students progress through the operation.

Studies reveal that 44% of the American K-12 teachers are feeling burned out often or always. This can be due to a variety of boring, monotonous, and tedious manual tasks that teachers need to tend to instead of interacting with students.

The future of education with artificial intelligence will look completely different for teachers. AI can take over some of these responsibilities. It can help with lesson planning, facilitate communication with parents, and automate administrative tasks, either partially or fully. Besides automation, artificial intelligence can also augment some teaching activities, increasing their efficiency. For instance, AI can collaborate with teachers to develop material and analyze student performance. It can even help design new educational products and services.

Administrative personnel are also swamped with work. Let’s take document verification as an example. During the student admission process, administrative staff needs to verify documents, such as grade sheets, which arrive in bulk. There can be thousands of documents at a time, and it’s exhausting to process them all manually. AI-powered tools can automatically extract, analyze, and verify such information.

Real-life example

TeachMateAI is an educational assistant that helps teachers with both monotonous and creative tasks. It can support learners at any age. TeachMateAI can compose assessment report drafts, generate classroom activity ideas, explain complex concepts to younger students, produce coloring sheets, and much more. The solution is currently used by over 200,000 teachers around the globe.

AI can evaluate certain tests, such as multiple-choice questions, matching exercises, and certain parts of language assessments, much faster than teachers. But the technology’s impact stretches far beyond that. AI algorithms can analyze student performance to pinpoint learning patterns and identify strengths and weaknesses. These tools can flag students who are likely to fail and give teachers pointers on how to help and engage these learners.

AI models can take a more holistic approach and analyze the performance of the entire school as a single unit and suggest adjustments and practices that educators can incorporate in their teaching routines.

Educational institutions can also use AI to facilitate remote exam proctoring. Since the pandemic, many learners opt for remote education, but conducting distant exams with security and fairness can be challenging. AI-powered software can supervise remote exams to make sure there is no cheating or identity theft.

Real-life example

The Eklavvya platform for remote assessments offers an AI-based exam proctoring option, which includes facial recognition and advanced analytics. This tool can verify students’ identities and control their browser to make sure they don’t open any forbidden webpages. It can also detect other people present in the examination room or when the candidate resorts to their smartphone for help and notify the human supervisor. This proctoring program can initiate a live chat with the candidate, terminate, and resume exam sessions.

Another exciting AI trend in education is making it accessible across geographical locations to people with special needs. Some rural and low-income communities have limited access to learning opportunities, and AI can play the role of an affordable online tutor.
International students or students with special needs benefit from artificial intelligence learning tools as well. Translation programs, for instance, can accurately translate a lecture into a student’s native language. Voice recognition and speech-to-text software can transcribe lectures. AI tools can caption lessons and display them on classroom screens so that students with hearing impairments don’t need to rely on sign language to follow along with the lecturer. Referencing tools can help students grasp complex content, say, breaking down a lengthy reading assignment into a set of simple, easily digestible, and structured pieces.

Real-life example

Rocket Learning designed AI-powered educational software that can help parents and rural child care center workers in India support kids on their early education journey. The program is accessible through WhatsApp. The AI coach composes gamified lessons to keep small children engaged, analyzes their performance, and gives parents insights into their children’s learning strengths and weaknesses.

If you’re planning to enrich your learning process with AI capabilities but don’t know where to start, here’s our high-level AI adoption plan you may rely on.

AI continues to shift the future of education towards democratizing knowledge and offering high-quality, personalized learning experiences. But there will be changes that we will have to make along the way.

One of these changes is slightly redefining the role of a teacher. Educators will need to learn to work alongside AI and control the technology. Some teachers will have to assume the role of AI administrator. They will vet AI tools to find out which content they can provide and whether they are suitable for the school. Institutions will also need to continuously evaluate where they can deploy AI to improve teaching, research, and any other processes to remain competitive and offer the best modern education possible.

If you are ready to start investing in AI in education, ITRex can be your trusted artificial intelligence development partner. We have a versatile portfolio of AI projects in a variety of sectors and a solid R&D department capable of developing innovative AI applications. We offer an AI proof of concept (PoC) service that enables educational institutions to test their ideas on a smaller scale and a lower budget without committing to a full-fledged project. You can learn more about AI PoC on our blog.

The ITRex team also includes experienced data strategy consultants who will advise you on data management and governance. They will help you build a strong data foundation that will support your other AI initiatives, reducing the total costs of future projects.