Tag: LEARNING

Categories
Tech Lite

AI in Education: The Future Of Learning

AI (Artificial Intelligence) and tech will continue to play an increasingly critical role in ensuring this personalized learning and will be a game changer for improving educational outcomes…reports Asian Lite News

As we sit on the threshold of 2024, we introspect and look back at the year that yielded massive strides in education reforms in our country. From further solidifying the National Education Policy to innovative tech integrations and a proposed curriculum aiming to make the students analyze and question at every step – the progress is unmistakable. While there are trends that will surely trickle into 2024 and beyond, there are aspects that we anticipate to further evolve with the fast-changing times.

Hyper-Personalized Learning and Subject flexibility

Hyper-personalization has made its way from corporate boardrooms to classrooms. While the pedagogical shift from teacher-centered to learning-centered has already begun, we will see it go a step further with greater personalized learning for individual students based on assessment models designed to understand individual learning styles and pace. This not only improves classroom engagement but also drastically improves academic outcomes. We will also see increased flexibility in terms of students in high school being given more subject choices and non-stereotypical combinations based on their interests. Students should be able to explore arts with say a commerce module on finance and taxes for all-round development.

Mainstreaming AI and tech beyond just hybrid learning

AI (Artificial Intelligence) and tech will continue to play an increasingly critical role in ensuring this personalized learning and will be a game changer for improving educational outcomes. With Data analytics, we will be able to tweak instructional content based on what a particular student may need. The government is already invested in ‘Make AI Work for India’ and setting up centers for excellence in higher education institutes. Going forward, we hope to see the progressive inclusion of AI in K-12 education as well. Some countries have already leapt with Australia allowing AI in schools from 2024 [1]with a national framework guiding its use.

The Progressive Integration of Critical Thinking

Along with higher tech integration, the evolution of curriculum to nudge critical and analytical thinking is set to pick pace. Two major boards – ICSE and ISC have already announced that in 2024, there will be an increase in the percentage of higher-order and critical-thinking questions and their share will progressively increase in years to come. This is especially critical as students need to be prepared early on in school to adapt to changing learning ecosystems and work environments in the future where analytical thinking is a key skill to possess for success.

Switching up Teacher’s Training

Training the trainers has long been a priority in school education. However, in the last year, we realized the need to reform teacher’s training to align with transforming curriculum, technology integration and evolving classroom environment and student needs. The best teachers in today’s day and age are those who can help students take individual ownership and accountability of their learning. Teachers training models, along with tech training and training on new pedagogies, will also include how they can play an impactful and facilitative role in a more collaborative and student-focused classroom. Teachers will have to work on their soft skills, leadership skills and innovative problem-solving skills to foster a learning space that is less of a top-down hierarchical, and more of a conversational environment driven by teamwork.

Strengthening Leadership in Education

The role of education in fostering student leaders takes a higher emphasis this coming year. The world is changing at an unprecedented rate and the need to build a cohesive community that strives for sustainability will require today’s students to eventually take charge. A curriculum that focuses on a better understanding of the earth and the community, social responsibilities, values and morals will be a higher priority in the coming year.

ALSO READ-Corporate Responsibility in Arts Promotion

Categories
Lite Blogs Tech Lite

Impact of AI on Customized Learning Experiences

Based on Item Response Theory (IRT), CATs dynamically adjust their difficulty level according to the student’s responses to an earlier question and are generally associated with a relatively well-defined knowledge domain…writes Aarul Malaviya

Assessment is an integral part of a student’s learning journey. Even as it involves testing a learner’s ability to grasp classroom instructions and make timely progress, it is also in some ways a measurement of the teaching proficiency as an instructor, and the entry of AI has further changed the dynamic between the teacher and the taught.

Although the entry of AI in education was a force of disruption initially, it is in time turning out to be a remarkably transformative tool from the standpoint of both students and teachers. Indeed, AI can help teachers not only deliver a more customised and personalised learning experience for their students but also help a great deal in terms of students’ assessments.

While AI has been proving to be a great enabler for formative assessment of students, i.e., assessment and feedback during the ongoing delivery of instructions, it can also aid in making diagnostic and summative assessments of the student’s performance.

So, what are the different ways in which AI can help teachers with students’ assessments?

Can generate an array of tests

Teachers can employ AI very effectively to generate a wide array of tests and assessments for their students. These tests could account for the differential needs of individual students in terms of difficulty levels, the nature of the subject itself, adaptability, time and place, etc. For instance, a combination of AI and voice recognition can prove to be a highly effective tool for assessing the reading fluency of students in the context of formative testing. Since there is immediate feedback and the assessment and scoring can be done multiple times, teachers can spot specific areas where a student needs help and can make improvements thereafter. Importantly, based on large amounts of student data, AI can help in generating individualised assessments and tests.

Allows automatic grading of students

It is the sheer magic of AI drawing on its very nature that it can facilitate automatic grading and scoring of students on a given assessment in a given subject area. For example, AI-based automated essay scoring or AES uses natural language processing (NLP) to grade written essays and is used mainly in summative assessment. Although NLP goes back decades, the AI engines that underpin AESs have made tremendous progress today in terms of the sophistication of algorithms, data processing capacity, and overall efficiency. Similarly, Computerised Adaptive Testing or CAT has been in vogue for decades and involves automatic assessment and grading of students, again particularly used for summative assessment. Based on Item Response Theory (IRT), CATs dynamically adjust their difficulty level according to the student’s responses to an earlier question and are generally associated with a relatively well-defined knowledge domain.

Stealth assessments address exam-related anxiety

AI can also help teachers in creating and implementing stealth assessments and tests. Typically used in game-based learning, they can assist teachers in testing students without an emphasis on the process of traditional testing. As such, having been automatically embedded into the learning process and the content itself, these tests resolve issues related to students’ exam-related anxiety, one major factor not only impinging on the latter’s performance but also overall evaluation.

Helps early identification of at-risk students

With predictive analytics being at the core of AI applications, it allows an examination of the past performance of students based on their interest, aptitude, attention span, and task completion rates. Apart from the adaptive assessment that involves adjusting the difficulty level for individual students, AI also supports teachers in the early identification of at-risk students as well as identifying problems that would likely require a remedy.

Aids surveillance & prevents cheating

Even as AI is increasingly being cited as a tool that ‘facilitates’ students’ cheating, especially in light of the ever-rising popularity and usage of Chat GPT, the generative large language model tool,it can also be used as an instrument of surveillance and indeed for prevention of cheating. Today, AI-powered remote proctoring tools are being developed that also include audio proctoring, video proctoring, and image proctoring, especially making use of facial recognition technologies. In addition, various plagiarism software focused entirely on AI-generated content is making their presence felt among users including teachers.

Frees up teachers’ time

The increased availability of AI-based assessments and tests also allows the teacher to shift back and forth between testing and teaching with more efficiency and more frequently thereby improving overall learning outcomes in the end. The bottom line is that AI applications greatly reduce the workload of teachers allowing them to concentrate better on their pedagogical method, instructional content, and the quality of delivery itself. 

Therefore, AI can indeed make the assessment process more accurate, personalized (for the student), and swift for the 21st-century teaching community. In a time and age of increasingly digitized curricula, the advent of advanced machine learning-based assessment systems that continue to make themselves better while being used would further make it easier for teachers to assess and evaluate their students.

ALSO READ-Learning social skills next target for AI

Categories
Lite Blogs Social Media

Challenges into fun learning experiences

I think it’s been a rough year and everybody in the world deserves to do epic things and feel like they accomplished something great…Vir speaks with Siddhi Jain.

Engaging in creative activities will surely help people to survive this tough period of pandemics. Comedian Vir Das, who premiered his new Creator Show on Snapchat this week, says that his viewers are getting younger — “an audience that I don’t know how to engage with, and I’m kind of full disclosure about that in the show”. Titled “Vir Das — The Most Epic Max Show”, this local and original Indian Creator Show will see Vir engage with a new audience in a fresh format.

According to Snapchat, he will take on seemingly impossible and new challenges in the show, pushing his boundaries and trying different things. Each challenge is either ‘Epic’ or a complete ‘Fail’, but either way, Vir makes it a fun learning experience. The weekly series premiered June 24 with episodes coming out every Thursday and each episode will give viewers a glimpse of the real comedian and a sneak peek into his life and friends.

“I’m coming from a place of not knowing and I’m coming from a place of willing to learn but also willing to fail massively and gloriously. So I think that’s where this comes in. As performers are content creators, I think people are starting to recognize that we have nuance to us and that we have layers that can go on different platforms. So yes, maybe me doing standup goes on one platform and maybe me acting goes on another platform, but me just marking about the house, doing stupid stuff — There’s a platform for that too because it’s relatable and fun,” Das told about the show in an interview.

“While the past year was extremely challenging, with being stuck at home for long periods of time, the one thing that the pandemic gave me was time. Time to recharge, rethink and revisit some of the things I had only thought of but never had the time to actually do. While in lockdown, I had to find unique ways to entertain my audience and most importantly, myself. This show is just one of the ways I managed to do that. Through the course of this show, I take up tasks that are seemingly impossible, a little bit ridiculous and according to my friends, an absolute waste of time. It’s my mission to prove them wrong by just innovating a little, and having fun! I hope that Snap audiences across the country enjoy these light moments of fun as much as I enjoyed making them happen,” says Vir.

Asked how his personality gets reflected in the show, Vir shares:

“The show that we’re doing with Snapchat is very much a simple concept, which is that you don’t have to do epic things to feel epic. I think it’s been a rough year and everybody in the world deserves to do epic things and feel like they accomplished something great. So, whether that’s me trying to beat the most popular noodles in India, see if I can do it in under two minutes or me taking only vanilla ice-cream and five basic ingredients that you could find in your fridge as well in making the most epic dessert, or me recognizing that my wife has married me and creating the most epic apology or something else. Just things that you can do at home, you don’t have to climb Mount Kilimanjaro.”

“All you gotta do is head to your kitchen maybe with me or to write this song with me or to do something stupid with me and we can both feel epic together. And I think that’s really where all good comedy comes from. It comes from minutest and from small things.”

Like all Shows on Snapchat, episodes average three to five minutes in length, are full-screen vertical and paced for mobile. Each series is authentic to the creator’s passion and is available to more than 70 million viewers in India who have watched Snapchat Shows in the last year.

ALSO READ-Have a brand new beginning with these books

READ MORE-Five books for your summer reading list