4 ways AI can help students

(Nanowerk News) As artificial intelligence systems play a bigger role in everyday life, they are also changing the world of education.

ChatGPT OpenAI, Bing Microsoft and Bard Google all have risks and opportunities. I am an educator and literacy researcherand here are four ways that I think this kind of system could be used to help students learn.

1. Differentiated instructions

Teachers are taught to identify the learning goals of all students in the class and adapt instruction to each student’s special needs. But with 20 or more students in a class, fully customized lessons are not always realistic. Everyone learns differently. The AI ​​system can observe how a student proceeds with a given task, how much time they take and are they successful. If students struggle, the system can offer assistance; if the student is successful, the system can present more difficult tasks to keep the activity challenging.

This type of real-time feedback is often difficult for one educator or school to provide for a single student, let alone an entire class or campus. AI adaptive learning tools has been proven to quickly and dynamically make changes to learning environment, content, and assignments to help individuals learn more and improve quickly.

For example, researchers at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University teach the system how to solve math problems. The system can follow instructions from human supervisors to understand math rules and adapt its approach to problems it has never seen before. The system can also identify areas where it has to make several attempts before arriving at the correct answer, mark them for the teacher as places where human students might get confused, and highlight the methods the system uses to get the correct answer more efficiently.

2. Smart textbook

Researchers at Stanford have developed and tested a prototype of the so-called “smart textbook”, entitled “Ask”. This is an iPad app that monitors students’ focus and attention as they read by paying attention to how students interact with the app. The interactive text includes keyword definitions accessible by touch or click and allows students to highlight and annotate while reading.

Textbooks can also suggest questions about content and areas for future investigation tailored to each individual. It can change the reading level of the text and also includes photos, videos and additional materials to help students understand what they are learning.

3. Improved assessment

Educational assessment focuses on how an educator knows whether a student is learning what is being taught. Traditional assessments – essays, multiple choice tests, short answer questions – have changed little from the past century. Artificial intelligence has the potential to change that by identifying patterns in learning that individual teachers or administrators may not see.

For example, language learning company Duolingo using AI and machine learning to create and score English proficiency tests for universities, companies, and government agencies. The test starts with a standard set of questions, but based on how students do, the system selects more difficult or easier questions to more quickly identify student strengths and weaknesses.

another appraisal project, Reach Every Reader, maintained by the Harvard Graduate School of Education, MIT and Florida State University, makes educational games for parents to play with their children while teaching them to read. Some games have adults and children role-play as characters based on real-life scenarios.

These games can help parents and teachers efficiently determine if children are reading at an appropriate grade level and get them on the right track if not.

4. Personalized learning

Personalized learning occurs when student interests and goals guide learning. The teacher is more of a facilitator, while the what, why and how of learning are mostly dictated by students. Artificial intelligence system can give individual instructions tailored to the interests of each student. AI adaptive learning system can quickly identify when a student is struggling and then provide more or different kinds of support to help them succeed. When students demonstrate that they have mastered a content or skill, AI tools provide more difficult assignments and materials more challenging to learner.

Chatbots have gotten used to it responds to typed or spoken input. Many people interact with chatbots when they ask Alexa or Siri questions. In education, chatbots with artificial intelligence systems can guide students with personalized and timely feedback or assistance. These chatbots can answer questions about course content or structure. This helps students track their own learning temporarily keep them motivated and engaged.

Just like an automatic playlist with music or video recommendations, an AI-powered recommendation system can generate customized assessment questions, detect misunderstandings and suggest new areas for students to explore. This AI technology has the potential to help students today and in the future.