Artificial Intelligence has become more popular recently than in the past due to technological development and improvement, especially in the telecommunication sector. It is becoming more integrated into our lives as more sectors adapt to automated systems to improve efficiency. AI technology is a major part of e-learning and will be critical in improving the education sector and learners’ experience. It will aid the government and education relations organizations like UNESCO to meet their sustainable development goal of providing quality education across the globe. AI technology will also aid in mitigating some of the inefficiencies and inadequacies the education sector faces. As such, it will play a vital role in making education more enjoyable and engaging for learners, creating a better learning environment for students with special needs, and improving administrators’ efficiency. However, it threatens the sector since it promotes cheating, reduces critical thinking for students, and reduces student-teacher interaction.
The first impact of AI in the future of the education sector is that it will make education more engaging and enjoyable for students. Gamification in education is impactful in enhancing the learning experience for learners. Gamification in education refers to adding gaming elements to class concepts to help enhance students’ learning experience through competitions in the typical class setting (Arnold and Jantke 10). Gamification encourages students to become more active in class as they compete with their classmates for points and rewards. AI-based gamified learning programs allow teachers to engage students with fun activities that enable them to understand concepts even better. For instance, Google’s Read Along has an AI assistant named Diya who helps children learn how to pronounce and spell words. The AI creates and presents children with word games and offers them points and rewards and points whenever they correctly pronounce or spell a word. The AI helps the child become more confident with their pronunciation and spelling of words increasing their cognitive abilities. Thus, through gamification of education, AI technology will help elevate and improve the rate at which students understand different concepts in school.
Another positive impact of AI in education is that it will help create a better learning environment for students with special needs. Using virtual reality and AI technology will elevate how schools approach teaching students with special needs. Incorporating AI with VR will critically help determine students’ concentration levels and attention spans. The educators can use the data to create teaching plans to enhance students’ attention spans and concentration levels. It can also teach social and educational skills to students with autism and Down syndrome by providing simulations of real-life interactions with others. According to Luckin et al., “It provides authentic, immersive experiences (the subjective impression that one is participating in a realistic experience) that simulate some aspect of the real world to which the user would not otherwise have access” (29). Students with special needs can face real-world experiences and interactions through VR, which can help them improve their social skills and emotional intelligence. Besides, AI also aids in creating an immersive learning environment for students with ADHD and concentration issues. The AI blocks any distractions that can impact the students’ concentration, making them more attentive in class and improving their grades. Therefore, AI technology will help students with special needs like autism, down syndrome, and ADHD receive proper learning, which can be difficult to attain in a typical class setting.
Lastly, AI will help improve administrators’ efficiency in running classes and schools and providing quality education. AI technology can be utilized to create class and course programs for teaching as it caters to the needs of the students. For instance, in a video by CNN 10, the presenter notes that Alef Education uses AI technology to analyze large sets of class data to prepare lesson plans depending on how students understand a concept and their performances (CNN 10). Doing this allows the educator to develop a better teaching program to help their students become well-versed with the concepts they teach. This, in turn, helps to elevate the students’ grades as the new teaching style is geared towards meeting the deficiencies of the student that impact their understanding of the course. AI can also by teachers shorten the time spent on grading and creating progress and performance reports for parents. AI software like Grade Scope and ChatGPT can be used to grade tests and essays for students. The software uses machine learning to grade the tests more accurately and faster than humans. As such, it allows the teacher to focus on other important teaching aspects and future class projects.
Nonetheless, AI is critiqued for having a negative impact on education. The use of AI has been noted to increase the rate of cheating in school, impacting students’ ability to become critical thinkers. Popular AI software like ChatGPT, Mind-Journey, and DALLE-2 can be used to write essays and produce art projects for students. The AIs are so accurate that they have helped students get high marks on their papers and projects since a teacher cannot distinguish between a human and an AI-written paper. An article by the Guardian notes that cheating is becoming more rampant in schools due to the easy accessibility of AI software to cheat since they are cheap, easy to find, and use (Reich). In addition, the numerous social media videos on how to use them have made them even more popular. Consequently, this reduces students’ ability to be creative thinkers in class since they rely on AI software to write their assignments. Using ChatGPT, one only needs to type the essay’s instructions, and the AI will write a complete essay within 3-5 minutes. This robs the student of their ability to improve upon their research and essay writing skills since the AI is doing the work. Thus, using AI for cheating could hinder the adoption of AI technology in education since it will promote poor academics.
Aside from cheating, AI will negatively impact student-teacher interaction, which is key in improving students’ academic, social, and cognitive performances. AI integration into the classroom has been critiqued on how it will impact human interaction in class. The student-teacher relationship and interaction are important because it helps students develop their soft skills while teachers improve their teaching capabilities. These soft skills, like compassion, as opposed to the hard skills of writing, reading, and arithmetic, are essential in how students relate with each other and the world around them. Teachers help students develop these skills by being kind, compassionate, and friendly. In turn, students share these values with their colleagues, which aids them in becoming more social and aware of their environment. Having fully AI-integrated classes could impact how students develop these skills. This could prove difficult for students with special needs since they need help processing their social and emotional capabilities. Teachers are capable of noticing subtle changes in their student’s behavior and emotional state better than an AI. Interacting with teachers allows the group to feel appreciated. As such, reducing their interaction with their teachers could impact their confidence and self-esteem, resulting in poor academic performance.
Even though AI has several negative impacts on the education sector, it will help improve its quality. Controlling access to AI software and technology is vital in regulating how students and teachers use it. For starters, stakeholders in the education sector could develop a better strategy for integrating AI and education that does not disrupt the teacher-student interaction. Finding a strategy that allows both parties to complement each other could prove integral in how the world government can achieve its sustainable development goals on education. On the issue of cheating, more institutions and teachers should integrate the use of AI detector software or Turnitin to detect papers and essays that have been developed through AI. Such software will deter students’ abilities to commit academic fraud through AI. They could also create awareness of using AI for cheating to ensure students know the consequences of using AI to write assignments and projects. As such, AI integration challenges in education are minimal and solvable, especially since AI is becoming more popular and technology is always improving.
In conclusion, AI integration in education will positively impact education as it becomes more advanced and popular. It will make education more enjoyable and engaging for learners, create a better learning environment for students with special needs, and improve the efficiency of administrators and teachers in delivering their services. It will enhance learner experience and academic performance since their need will be catered to. However, it still poses a major challenge to academic credibility as it facilitates cheating and reduces student-teacher interaction. These challenges hurt the students’ academic success as they impair their critical thinking and ability to improve their cognitive and social skills. Regardless, AI is still the future of education as it provides many possibilities to improve the sector.
Work Cited
Arnold, Oksana, and Klaus P. Jantke. “Educational Gamification & Artificial Intelligence.” Tech Report (2018).
CNN 10. “Is AI The Future Of Education?” YouTube, www.youtube.com/watch?v=7devgjUP2pY. Accessed 16 Dec. 16.
Luckin, Rose, et al. “Intelligence unleashed: An argument for AI in education.” Open Research Online (2016).
Reich, Rob. “Now AI Can Write Students’ Essays for Them, Will Everyone Become a Cheat?” The Guardian, 28 Nov. 2022, www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/28/ai-students-essays-cheat-teachers-plagiarism-tech.
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