How AI Technology Is Empowering the Education Sector

 What is the Use of AI in Education?

If you want to understand the expansion and role of AI in education, you must take a look at this. A recently published report by the Global Market Estimates says that AI in the education market is expected to be valued around USD 20.54 billion by 2027.

However, if you are to understand its true impact, I have another interesting reference for you – this podcast on ways AI is used in education. I have also listed below a few scenarios from my observation:

• Personalized Learning Experiences –

Today’s new digital age is all about personalization. And since education has transitioned to an outcome-based industry, the focus of every educator and learner is on tailoring learning structures to suit student needs. AI helps in doing that wondrously.

This adaptive learning technology curates insights on student performances, their learning gaps, helping educators adapt learning materials to individual needs. With AI integration, learners are now able to self-pace courses and fill knowledge gaps. In fact, a study revealed that adaptive learning enables learners to cut down learning times by 50%.

• Amplified Responsiveness –

New-age learning demands real-time engagement and responsiveness. AI-led efficiencies help create virtual tutors modelled on natural language processing. Take Socratic by Google or Carnegie Learning’s MATHia - these models are pre-fed relevant data patterns and can resolve student queries, provide instant feedback. They are available 24X7, and do not just provide explanations but also deliver practice exercises.

In fact, AI-led chatbots can also help lessen administrative loads by promptly replying to common questions and automating tasks as per command flows.

• Knowledge Gap Identification -

In the age of digital learning and e-classrooms, educators cannot give tailored attention to every learner. However, distance learning mechanisms demand tailored support.

Artificial analysis builds support for predictive analysis, a model which critically analyses data to identify learners that need support. This helps educators pitch in help early and target their assistance towards lesson completion.

• Higher Accessibility and Inclusiveness:

With the widespread of digital platforms, people from under-developed areas and ones with limited language abilities are also becoming targeted users. Artificial intelligence helps you bridge the gap with such users and even learners with disabilities.

With AI-led text-to-speech, translation and transcription functionalities, education can be made accessible for learners from any area and with any capabilities.

• Administrative Efficiencies:

At the core of artificial intelligence is amplifying productivity with automation. It brings the same advantage to learning systems by reducing operational loads. From admissions, onboardings and paperwork to scheduling and grading – AI can significantly reduce the load on human resources.

You can leverage AL tools like Google Classroom, Blackboard Assist to automate repetitive tasks and ease out administrative workloads.

• Language Learning:

One of the most practical usage of AI has been in fostering practical upskilling for real-world conversations. And AI-powered platforms like Duolingo have definitely enhanced learning experiences by making them more interactive.

Leveraging adaptive learning principles with gamification, such platforms tailor short-term courses as per learners progress. The AI integration in such platforms enable realistic ongoing conversations with AI bots to enhance language speaking and understanding capabilities. On the other hand, AI-powered gamifications and rewards keep learners motivated to complete courses.

• Exam Proctoring:

The new-age learning environments essentially thrive on virtual assessments. AI has enabled educators and learning institutions to virtually invigilate during assessments.

With object tracking, eye-hand movement analysis, typing patterns and sound cues, learning institutions can flag off suspicious activities. These help them maintain and streamline the integrity of virtual assessments for fair gradings – reason why AI right now is one of the top trends in education sector.

Advantages of Using AI in Education Industry

In spite of its growing popularity, business leaders in education are often unsure of the impact that AI can bring. So, if you are someone who doesn’t trust even top eLearning statistics, we’ll break it down for you! While it is an agreeable fact that the influence of AI is often not directly measurable, we can broadly classify the benefits as follows:

1. Next-gen Tutoring - In the era of the EdTech revolution, AI in teaching helps understand a student’s learning pattern and their preceding knowledge. Educators can leverage these crucial insights to build adaptive models for learners that need deeper assistance. To speak realistically, AI has elevated teaching standards by leaps, bridging the teacher-student physical proximity.

2. Feedback on Study Material – It is one of the best advantages of AI in education. Imagine multiple students are answering the same question incorrectly, here AI can narrow down the concepts students are missing, so faculties can provide specific material. Since AI models constantly study operational and user data, they can identify inefficiencies and gaps on a real-time basis and tailor course structures accordingly.

3. Customization - AI in education easily addresses each student’s learning requirements and can curate study material considering their potencies and weak points. As we have already discussed, personalization and adaptive learning are two strongest suits in AI-led education. And the best part is that AI analysis is largely unfailing because they access data correlations to deduce conclusions.

4. Real-time Grading - Sure, AI in teaching doesn’t only help teachers to curate custom study material but it can help them grade exams and assess their students' learning capacities. When it comes to digital assessments, learning institutions have to process a huge bulk of tests to assess student gradings. AI makes the job easy by following pre-fed answers to facilitate real-time assessment analysis.

5. Thoughtful Content- Since virtual learning caters to learners of all age-groups and aptitudes, educators and learning institutions can now create on-demand or need-based content. AI helps them generate content with gamification elements to make learning more responsive. From practice mock tests, quizzes and even automated scoring, AI has graphically elevated the quality of content used in virtual learning now.

6. Data-driven Predictive Analysis- The education industry is steadily progressing by banking on futuristic trends. Even AI-led capabilities and engaging learning modules were one of these trends. The great part here is that this trend can pivot learning institutions towards more futuristic patterns.

Leveraging AI algorithms businesses can now analyze exam performances, engagement patterns, learning trends etc. to recommend instructional and functional improvements in the learning process.

The benefits of AI for education sector sure seem lucrative. But here’s a warning, you also need to analyze the opportunities, challenges and solutions in the eLearning industry first. Without in-depth knowledge in these two areas, you’ll be eating a half-baked cake!

Artificial Intelligence in Education - Challenges and Opportunities for Sustainable Development

More and more companies irrespective of their industries are building AI-driven software solutions to automate and streamline business processes. In the education industry, the outcomes are the same.

Here’s how AI is revolutionizing the way educational institutions work:

• Custom Approach to Education

AI and education are a match made in heaven! It provides a personalized learning experience to each student considering their background, native language, learning patterns, capabilities, and interests. AI in the classroom makes learning more interactive for students.

• Improves Learning Outcomes

Students can now easily learn and finish their assignments with the help of eLearning portals integrated with AI automation. From innovative assessments to interactive, game-based learning models, award-based level unlocking to impeccable visualizations, all aid in learning retention and higher grades.

• Improves Students’ Visualization

Leveraging AI in education, integrated with VR/AR technologies helps create interactive lessons for students, eventually improving their awareness and emotional intelligence. Additionally, VR/AR tools help enhance collaboration and communication abilities in young learners.

• Enhanced Realistic Abilities

Education is no longer about certificates on paper, but realistic application. Irrespective of the course – regular grade-based academia or professional upskilling, every learner wants to build aptitudes that helps them in real-life situations.

With AI-led visibility and analysis, learners are now able to detect their own gaps and move towards upskilling and enhancing individual growth. AI-based learning models ae known for coaching competences like analytical thinking, problem solving, leadership skills, collaborative learning and innovation – skills that help learners score above their competitors in several areas.

• Increased Engagement and Course Completion:

The EdTech industry in particular, has suffered immensely in its early days from course abandonment issues. The integration of AI has largely resolved this issue. With AR/VR and computer vision enhancements, learners have been observed to be more engaged and interactive in virtual lessons.

Apart from this, statistical data on learner preferences and engagement patterns enable educators to tailor experiences for better digital experiences. It is needless to say that AI is one trends investments for which has and is continually yielding favourable results for education businesses.

• Visibility and Observation:

AI isn’t just yielding benefits for educators and learners. Its impact reaches parents and families of learners as well. While parent-teacher conversations were formerly limited to PTMs or one-on-one interactions, now digitization has transformed it graphically. AI has enabled parents to have a real-time insight on their wards’ progress and areas of improvements.

But you must also know about probable challenges that you might face when attempting to integrate AI in education. Let’s take a look at those:

1. The Digital Divide:

Expansion of virtual education has led the industry to explore developing and under-developed areas of the world. Learners from such areas might not have access to the necessary devices or internet connectivity that AI-led features demand.

2. Training Educators:

Despite the growing influence of AI in education, the industry still struggles with technically upgraded educators. To effectively harness the power of artificial intelligence, teachers do not just need to know about learning tools, but administrative and operational tools as well.

Educational businesses need to constantly train teachers in AI-powered facilities – how to make learning more immersive with innovative tests, realistic visualizations, automate routine tasks like attendance checks, form lesson plans etc. They also need to be educated on how to feed accurate data into AI systems for failproof assessment analysis.

3. AI Infrastructure:

The optimum performance of AI depends on accurate data structures and infrastructures to host the solutions. However, most educational institutions lack the insights to understand if they’ll be able to leverage AI to its full capacity.

An EdTech software development company can help you with efficient AI integration, help you make architectural and infrastructural changes that supports AI enhancements in education.

4. Data Privacy & Ethical Considerations:

Since AI models are data led, they access huge volumes of operational and user data. Such integrations also build several touchpoints from where data vulnerabilities can arise. Thus, educational businesses must be increasingly careful how data is collected, processed and stored to ensure ethical use.

Emerging Technologies in Education to Combine with AI

There are different software development trends for the EdTech industry that will make the teaching and learning process seamless. Some of these emerging software trends to integrate with AI are:

• Augmented Reality – Integrating AR (Augmented Reality) with AI education software will help improve the educational experience by superposing digital data onto physical things. This enables students to learn better about the subject and prepares them for the real world.
• IoT (Internet of Things) - IoT applications or systems enable administration staff and teachers to obtain real-time data from classrooms, like student attendance, desk use, students jumping around, temperature levels, and many more.
• Virtual Reality - VR and AI in EdTech help to improve student learning in both technical and medical fields by offering interactive, and deeply engaging experiences that simulate real-time scripts. For instance, interacting with bones, 3D models of organs, etc.
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