Introduction
Educational establishments make significant contributions toward defining the future of a nation. These establishments ensure that young individuals master specific knowledge and skills, which will be further needed to succeed professionally and impact society. That is why appropriate organizations and the government are expected to do their best to increase the quality of learning and teaching. These bodies develop and introduce appropriate interventions, technologies, and methodologies to ensure that schools and universities provide students with the best possible knowledge and skills. Technological and scientific progress promotes this process because various innovations can significantly improve the efficiency of learning and teaching. Today, educational establishments can benefit from numerous technologies, and artificial intelligence (AI) is among them. It is reasonable to introduce AI solutions in the classroom because they allow for personalizing curriculum, utilizing adaptive learning, providing timely feedback, and helping teachers draw more attention to students.
AI Defined
To begin with, one should explain what AI is and how it works. This technology refers to software that is powered by self-learning algorithms (Marr, 2022). When a particular task is assigned to an AI program, the latter can become better and better with this activity with the help of these algorithms. This finding denotes that the selected technology has almost unlimited opportunities and can be effectively utilized in various spheres, and education is no exception. As for this context, AI is an umbrella term that includes a few specific interventions that are promising for the entire area of education. That is why it is reasonable to discuss these options in more detail below.
AI in the Classroom: Direct Advantages for Students
The most powerful argument for introducing AI into education is the ability to personalize and customize the curriculum to student needs. All people are unique in their opportunities, skills, and intelligence levels, which denotes that it can be challenging for educators to satisfy the needs of diverse students in the classroom. AI solves this issue because this technology can suggest personalized learning pathways for students of different ages (Chen, Chen, et al., 2020). A suitable example of this technology refers to the Altitude Learning system that was created by a Google engineer (Marr, 2022). Marr (2022) additionally states that it is known as adaptive learning, which can significantly increase the quality of studying. These findings indicate that AI can analyze students’ performance and achievements to make corrections to the curriculum to ensure that all the learners can cope with tasks. Simultaneously, this intervention guarantees that capable or gifted students are not assigned elementary tasks. In other words, AI ensures that students deal with assignments that perfectly correspond to their abilities and knowledge.
Students can additionally benefit from AI in the classroom because this technology can provide individuals with personalized assistance. This option is especially important in relation to online and mobile remote learning (Chen, Chen, et al., 2020). During the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of students were forced to engage in remote learning, and many of them faced difficulties. The problems were associated with the fact that students could receive timely responses from their tutors because the latter did not have the physical ability to perform all their tasks within a limited timeframe. If AI options had been utilized during the crisis, learners would not have faced any significant challenges because virtual personalized assistants would have answered all the questions in a timely manner. There is no doubt that this opportunity could have significantly improved students’ performance and outcomes.
AI is an international concept, and its advantages are found in various countries. For example, it is rational to look at China, where education effectiveness suffered because of the large number of students in every class. That is why this country has introduced an AI technology that relies on facial recognition. This innovation is used to scan students’ faces to determine whether they are drawing sufficient attention to events and processes in the classroom (Marr, 2022). One can expect that the given system is beneficial for students because it ensures that they are not distracted from class materials. This approach is promising since it can improve learning effectiveness. In other words, the given AI technology minimizes the opportunity for absenteeism that harmfully affects children’s performance.
In addition to that, AI can make the classroom environment productive, objective, and fair. Grades represent the assessment of students’ performance, and some children, teenagers, and adults can overestimate their importance. When they receive a poor mark, these individuals can become angry at educators or even believe that tutors are prejudiced regarding them. AI solves this issue since it contributes to fair assessment and grading (Chen, Chen, et al., 2020). Appropriate algorithms and technologies are utilized to evaluate students’ assignments and answers objectively and without any bias. This system is suitable for assessing written tasks, quizzes, and even oral answers. This state of affairs is positive and productive for students who understand that they are evaluated fairly according to their skills, abilities, and knowledge. In this situation, students will not draw attention to unnecessary thoughts or concerns but invest more time and effort in studying.
AI in the Classroom: Indirect Advantages for Students
In the education system, there are numerous stakeholder groups, including students, educators, and administrators. The cooperation among them significantly affects the quality of education and how well students can absorb materials and master skills. That is why it is reasonable to ensure that AI positively impacts other stakeholders because this strategy can be beneficial. One should draw the most attention to tutors because these professionals directly cooperate with students and can essentially influence their learning performance. Furthermore, teachers spend much time with learners, which denotes that the former can either contribute to or create barriers to effective studying of the latter. Thus, it is not surprising that various AI technologies and initiatives are developed to provide tutors with improvements to ensure that they can help students achieve better outcomes in the classroom.
Firstly, AI is effective for educators because they can pass some of their tasks on to technology. According to Chen, Xie, et al. (2020), AI initiatives are suitable for completing repetitive and tedious tasks that can include the assessment of fill-in-the-blank or multiple-choice questions. Teachers typically spend much time and effort checking these assignments, and AI can become an effective relief for these professionals. Innovative technology can check all students’ answers within a limited period. As a result, teachers have more time that they can devote to working with students, explaining materials to them, and answering their questions in the classroom. Chen, Xie, et al. (2020) additionally state that AI is beneficial because it ensures that teachers can respond to students’ requests online, which is important in the modern digitalized world. Thus, it is reasonable to expect that new technologies have the potential to make the education system more effective and convenient for different stakeholders.
Secondly, AI is effective since it can provide teachers with helpful and valuable information. Bui (2020) mentions that AI technologies can give informative feedback regarding students to educators. For example, a potential scenario implies that algorithms analyze learners’ assignments and performance and identify that an unusual problem appears. In this case, teachers can receive a notification highlighting the unexpected finding (Bui, 2020). This discovery can be a driver for educators to talk to the students and understand what caused their decreased performance. Even though this feature is a helpful tool for teachers, learners will receive fundamental advantages. When a student faces a problem in their life, they can be undetermined to disclose it to teachers to receive appropriate health. AI-driven technologies make it possible for children to be not expected to report their problems to have them solved. Appropriate algorithms provide educators with the necessary information to notice and address issues at their initial stages.
Thirdly, AI-powered innovations help teachers improve their professional skills and competencies. According to Marr (2022), a personal assistant, Merlyn, is an effective tool that can make educators more successful and effective. This AI technology helps professionals succeed in classroom management and lesson presentation (Marr, 2022). In other words, tutors can rely on Merlyn’s assistance to choose how it is better to present new materials for a specific class. These professionals can additionally delegate some management or organizational tasks in the classroom to this assistant. There is no doubt that these features will be beneficial for students in the long run. When teachers rely on the most effective lesson presentation methods and techniques, learners more effectively absorb materials, which positively affects their performance and outcomes. Improved classroom management establishes an environment that is productive for students and their learning.
Finally, AI is a powerful tool to identify systemic issues and offer ways to address them. According to Hwang et al. (2020), AI can be an effective policy-making advisor. This statement denotes that appropriate algorithms can identify a policy problem that harmfully affects the entire educational industry (Hwang et al., 2020). For example, AI can find that a newly implemented initiative resulted in significant drawbacks, and it is necessary to solve this issue. This feature is expected to improve educational processes and establish a more productive and suitable environment in the classroom. That is why there is no doubt that this option is beneficial for students and their performance because AI eliminates all the phenomena that contribute to learning barriers.
Conclusion
AI is a promising innovation that can significantly and positively impact the educational sphere. On the one hand, it is beneficial for students because this technology can personalize the curriculum, make remote learning more effective with the help of personal assistants, and monitor students’ performance to identify possible problems. These features can directly influence students, which will make their learning activities more successful. On the other hand, AI impacts teachers and policymakers, which results in indirect benefits for learners. For instance, appropriate algorithms can assess and grade students’ works, automate tutors’ activities, and provide teachers with personal assistants to cope with class management and materials presentation tasks. There is no doubt that all these features can make the educational sphere more convenient for students. That is why various stakeholders should advocate for the active implementation of AI in educational establishments.
References
Bui, S. (2020). Top educational technology trends in 2020-2021. eLearning Industry. Web.
Chen, L., Chen, P., & Lin, Z. (2020). Artificial intelligence in education: A review. IEEE Access, 8, 75264-75278.
Chen, X., Xie, H., Zou, D., & Hwang, G. J. (2020). Application and theory gaps during the rise of artificial intelligence in education. Computers and Education: Artificial Intelligence, 1, 100002. Web.
Hwang, G. J., Xie, H., Wah, B. W., & Gašević, D. (2020). Vision, challenges, roles, and research issues of artificial intelligence in education. Computers and Education: Artificial Intelligence, 1, 100001. Web.
Marr, B. (2022). The five biggest education and training technology trends in 2022. Forbes. Web.