Generative AI Revolutionising Education: The Future of Edtech
Generative AI has become a hot topic, promising to change various industries, including education, significantly. This article examines how generative AI will reshape the Edtech landscape and address the limitations of our century-old education system.
The real problem with Education
We are still in 100 years old system of education. Humans have evolved in how we live, grow, spend time, and work. But our education in school has stayed the same. No one has devised a way to change education in our times. This is why we don’t apply 99% of what we learn in school or college. Wasting 20 years of our lives learning something we will never apply. The real problem with the Education system now is Skill based on education and trained teachers to transact good pedagogy and curriculum. We must transform from an industrial worker to an AI-human worker education system.
Why Edtech are not equipped to handle the real problem
Edtech solutions often fail to address the root of educational issues, assuming that their system is the solution. This stems from societal and parental beliefs about education. Historically, education has been built on four pillars: students, parents, teachers, and society. Technology, specifically AI, now adds a fifth pillar to this structure. But in the present world Edtechs build their solution only student-centric; they are not worried about working with other pillars. This needs to be a collective effort for society. We as humans will evolve into Cyber-humans, and education for the future is essential now.
How generative AI will kill 90% of the Edtech
Generative AI models like generative adversarial networks or GANs, variational autoencoders or VAEs, and powerful autoregressive models can create photo-realistic images, original art, videos, music, speech, code, blog posts, essays, stories, computer programs, and even other AI systems. They can generate a masse, produce infinite variations on a theme, and customize outputs based on prompts or constraints. Powerful multimodal models can generate photorealistic images, videos, speech, music, multimedia, and more. This could be used to create custom diagrams, illustrations, charts, figures, animations, documentaries, and other visual content that enhances instruction. On-demand interactive media, simulations, games, and virtual environments could intuitively represent complex concepts or systems for students.
With all types of content, structure, programming, and heavy lifting is done by a simple Chat, why would anyone subscribe to any content or course? I don’t see any reason.
The Real Problem to be Addressed in 21st-Century Learning and How AI Address This
Here are some of the significant opportunities for generative AI to improve today’s education:
• Personalization. Generative AI can create customized educational experiences tailored to each student’s skills, abilities, learning pace, interests, and needs. This includes tailored lessons, assignments, feedback, and learning paths for each learner. This level of personalization is not possible with today’s one-size-fits-all approach.
• Engagement. AI systems can generate highly engaging and interactive content, simulations, games, and experiences that capture students’ interest and motivate learning. This could help reduce boredom and improve persistently low student engagement.
• Access. On-demand access to AI-generated lessons, tutoring, and educational content can expand access for students who lack resources or face barriers to learning. This could help address issues like the global teacher shortage.
• Adaptability. AI can quickly adapt educational content and strategies based on how each student learns, their progress, areas of difficulty, and mastery. This real-time adaptability is far beyond current approaches.
• Personalized Feedback. AI can provide personalized, adaptive feedback and guidance for each student based on their learning and progress. Timely and tailored feedback is often lacking in today’s educational settings.
• Multimedia and Interactive Content. Generative AI can produce diverse multimedia content, including text, images, audio, video, simulations, and interactive media. This richness of media and interactivity would significantly enhance learning compared with most of today’s static and passive educational content.
• Continuous Learning. AI-based systems never get tired or bored and can continue generating educational content and supporting students 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They provide opportunities for continuous learning beyond the classroom or school hours.
• Fairness and Inclusiveness. AI can help identify and address bias, make learning opportunities more inclusive, and ensure equal access to high-quality education for all students, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds or with learning differences or disabilities. This can help remedy some of the limitations and inequities of today’s education systems.
• Personal Well-being. AI could provide personalized support for student’s mental health, emotional development, and personal well-being. Concepts like social-emotional learning and character development could be enhanced using AI in ways lacking in most of today’s education.
• Lifelong Learning. Generative AI can help transform education into a lifelong learning process tailored to each individual. This could help people continue developing skills, learning new domains, and achieving goals over the course of their lives in a way not possible with today’s limited educational opportunities.
The Real Game changer, which no one is talking about
Irrespective of all the above advantages, which will help to create real personalized learning with proper learning analytics and skill-based teaching, the real revolution is the change in UX; you heard it right. Any technology adoption has happened exponentially only due to great UX experience. Traditional Edtech apps and software offered all the features of generative AI, but they never created an impact because of a lack of good personalized User Experience. With ChatGPT and Claude, this will transform to a whole new level. Everyone must include that this new UX will be available as a Chat AI across the platform, in an App, software, mobile, WhatsApp, or chat-enabled window. This Chat ai will be available as a talking avatar like D-id or Replika. This will be the next most crucial inflection point in every domain and drastically transform education. This will become a virtual friend who will create the required deep engagement so kids will fall in love with learning rather than being depressed and scared of schooling and exams.
Most important Variable to shape the Future
Every corporate and large corporation that created the Educational product has realized with long research that one variable which can never be taken out of the equation to achieve the best learning outcome is the TEACHER. All the above technology will only be successful in conjunction with a great teacher. The biggest problem which the world is facing is the availability of quality teachers; even countries have started raising alarms about this. We are 21K Schools that can achieve an excellent learning outcome with a Student Teacher ratio of 1:16. Not having a 1:16 student-teacher ratio will take the education cost up. Chat AI will transform this and would be able to take this ratio to 1:n by reducing the need for teachers’ time and teaching hours with a combination of chat AI.
