Artificial Intelligence, Education and Learning

Artificial intelligence has become more than just a buzzword in the twenty-first century. Although the presence of robot fruit sellers on streets is not a reality as of yet, though AI is playing a significant role in our daily lives. Artificial intelligence is impacting every industry and education industry is not an exception, with the availability of AI the education sector is becoming more strengthened for students as well as for teachers. Here are some of the major areas of education/learning that would be significantly impacted by AI. 

Reduction of Manual work– Teachers, on an average day spend almost 45 minutes checking homework, test papers and doing other forms of manual work. Artificial Intelligence can reduce this time significantly and this time can be used by teachers to instruct the students and for the growth of the students. AI is yet not capable of replacing the human teachers because it is yet not sophisticated enough to scrutinize the subjective form of questions, but the objective form of tests can be conducted easily with the help of artificial intelligence. The other clerical form of administrative work can easily be done with AI. 

This reduction of manual work would give teachers time to give more personal time to students who require it, a small amount of needed focus can improve a student’s performance significantly.

Adaptive, Interactive and Personalized Learning– The teaching methodology at present fails to adapt to individual student levels as the same teacher gives the same lessons to all the students, in such a scenario, students with slow capturing power fail to match the whole class performance. Artificial Intelligence is fixing this problem in the education sector, AI-enabled measurement systems and instruction materials are capable of adapting to the student’s learning speed, which allows teachers to identify the learning gap among the students and contributes to enhanced learning for the students. 

Instant Feedback– Students’ performance in an academic calendar can be significantly improved by providing feedback on the performance. Teachers require time to assess the student test papers which delays the feedback-process. Artificially Intelligent testing platforms can provide instant feedback on student performance that would speed the process of taking action on weak areas.

Access to Global Classrooms– Artificial can make the global classroom a reality, with the availability of real-time translator plug-ins students can be a part of classrooms that are conducted in a different language to the languages known to them. This would make learning more enriching and diverse. Physically unfit or ill students would also be able to attend classes from their homes and won’t sacrifice on learning due to medical conditions. 

Economical Benefits– The money spent on paper for conducting tests and other administrative work can be saved with the help of artificial intelligence. The reduction in expenses can allow schools to restructure their fee-structures and as a consequence would make education less expensive.

Artificial Intelligence can make education available to all in the near future.

What are the ways in which you see AI impacting Education and Learning?

Factors that create and sustain Cheating Practice

Cheating in homework or exam is common among students and most of those who cheat don’t even feel the guilt of this illicit practice. All the punishment model of cheating prevention don’t work because they are the attempts to stop the process without even considering its origination.

Students who cheat are not the only ones who want to escape the learning process. Good students often compromise on their academic integrity due to the lack in our teaching methodologies and education policies. Teachers often think about the ways to effectively encourage students not to cheat.

To decrease the tendency to cheat among students, teachers need to give equal moral significance to all homework and classwork content that work as initial tools of evaluation. Teachers, in most cases, worry about the cheating of students in the examination hall, but they happily neglect the copied homework and assignments. This initial act of ignorance sends a message among students that they are allowed to cheat. The failure to point out the first acts of academic plagiarism works as a motivating factor that encourages students to repeat cheating.

Inefficient Parameters of Judgement

In the present education system, the mode of instruction and evaluation stays the same for every student even though we are well aware that all students don’t have the same learning speed and concept retention. The absence of personalized modes of instruction and evaluation makes learning a race that demands every student to be the first to finish every lap of it that creates a psychological pressure which pushes students to cheat.

Lack of Morality

Whether students see cheating as morally acceptable or not plays a significant role in their decision about cheating. It is necessary to instill morality among students and to link morality with their character. If students realize that the moral disintegration makes their character weak and a weak character makes life hard to live then they would not cheat.

The availability of solutions to almost all homework problems at finger-tips has made plagiarism easier that makes the need to instill a sense of moral integrity among students more pressing.

Pressure of Excellence

Cheating in the examination hall is a result of the unwillingness to take personal responsibility for learning and plagiarism in homework is often-times a result of the pressure that students feel due to the expectations of the teachers and parents.

Students in the present times are expected to perform exceptionally well in academics as well as in extra-curricular activities, this pressure of expectations pushes them to find easy ways to impress their teachers and cheating comes handy to them.

My Take

It is not sufficient to take only disciplinary actions to reduce plagiarism in homework and cheating in examination, we as educators and policymakers also need to reconsider our approach to learning for the long term changes.

Share your how are you putting an end to cheating in your class.

Motivation, Learning, and ways to improve both.

Keeping the students motivated in the class increases their participation in learning. Students who feel motivated perform better than the students who don’t. Both internal and external motivation is needed to keep students engaged, but it’s not as easy to do as it may seem because motivation fades away if you don’t feed it every day. Here are some tips to keep students motivated.

Set Objectives For each Class

Begin the class by clearly stating the objectives of the lesson. When teachers don’t state the objectives of a class, it distracts students because they don’t know where they are and where they are going. When students leave a class with the feeling of accomplishment, they consider the lesson constructive. It is also significant to go through everything covered in the class to give students an idea of their progress at the end of the lesson.

Clarity of vision is the key to achieving your objectives. – Tom Steyer

Create Open Spaces

Students should feel a sense of belonging to the class; their actions in the class should result in something more than just the binaries of praise and punishment. When teachers show a sense of confidence in the abilities of students by creating spaces of open communication, students feel motivated to engage in the learning process. Creating a balanced environment of discipline and fun motivates students to participate openly in learning.

I think for any relationship to be successful, there needs to be loving communication, appreciation, and understanding. – Miranda Kerr

Foster Positive Competition

Competition among students can work as a catalyst to improve the collective performance of the class. To promote positive competition, teachers can conduct group activities that allow students to share their knowledge with their classmates. Group activities are the best tools to bring different brains together to solve problems and inspire students to contribute to the progress of the whole group.

Healthy competition is always good for us. It helps the squad as well with the depth. – Jesse Lingard

Reward the Students

There is no better way to encourage students than rewarding them for their contribution to the class. Identifying the personality types of the students and rewarding them according to their personality boosts their confidence and keeps them motivated.

The basic idea that incentives can be used to motivate behavior is a powerful one. – Emily Oster

Inculcate Leadership among Students

Instilling a sense of personal responsibility in students makes them a good student and a good individual. Responsibility of the small tasks in the class gives students a sense of significance as most students consider classroom tasks a privilege not a burden. Sometimes teachers should act as facilitators of the tasks and let students take the leading roles.

Leadership is a way of thinking, a way of acting and, most importantly, a way of communicating. – Simon Sinek

Promote Self-Reflection 

Introspection not just of academic performance, but also of all the phases of life should be encouraged by the teachers. Self-reflection allows students to identify the areas which need attention.

Change comes from reflection. – Genesis P-Orridge

Know and Take Care of your Students

Memorizing the names of the students is not “knowing” them. Students know when their teacher has an interest in them and cares for them, when students realize that their teacher cares for them, they feel motivated to perform better. 

The simple act of caring is heroic. – Edward Albert

Analyze Performance

Teachers need to track student performance to give direction to their students. It is hard for students to judge themselves objectively, but teachers can help their students by showing them their progress, tracking progress is beneficial for students and teachers.

Teacher compensation isn’t the only factor in cultivating great teaching. Other important priorities include changing how we measure student performance… -Michael Bennet 

Do Fun Learning

To maintain student interest in the textbooks, sometimes it is necessary to step away from textbooks. Intertextual references, audio, video, and promoting reading outside the textbook by fun activities maintain student interest in learning.

Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you will never cease to grow. – Anthony J. D’Angelo

Give feedback and be Welcoming

Saying “thank you” for the contribution of the students even when they don’t answer correctly boosts their confidence, especially of the weaker students. You can always say something affirmative; start the lesson with welcome vibes.

The level of motivation in students is a direct reflection of the motivation of the teacher. A motivated teacher will always find his/her students motivated because energies are contagious. So, staying motivated is one of the best ways to keep your students motivated.

The best teachers are those who keep students motivated, challenged and flourishing. – John Kline

How teachers’​ attitude affects student happiness?

Being a teacher is a tough task and comes with many challenges. The overwhelming responsibilities that start from text-book lessons and expand to devoting multiple hours of a day scrutinizing the answer scripts of students and other administrative works that never seem to finish can exhaust teachers in more than just physical ways. The work-load in teaching can make teachers feel irritable and distressed which can have a significant impact on the teacher-student relationship.

When I was a student, I often experienced that my performance in the class on any given day was somehow related to my teachers’ behaviour and attitude in the class. I used to feel that whenever my teachers spoke to me in a positive and encouraging tone, I experienced a positive emotion that was responsible for my increased participation in the class. Whereas, on the days when teachers used to be low energy or not so positive, my participation and engagement in the class used to decrease significantly.

As a student, I felt that the positive and encouraging attitude of the teachers was the factor that reduced the distance between the students and teachers. Whereas the negative and closed attitude of teachers created a distance between the teacher and student, it also distracted students from their studies. Low-energy teachers found it hard to keep their students interested in the lessons, on the other hand, the enthusiastic teachers could engage their class nonchalantly. 

The personal reminiscences of childhood experiences motivated me to look deeper into how the attitude and mood of teachers in the class can affect student performance. While doing the research, I wondered if something of this sort is even possible or it’s just my whim.

I looked into the research conducted by David Blazer of the University of Maryland that analyzed teachers’ influence on student outcomes. The investigation gathered information from fourth and fifth-grade educators in four schools in three states on the East Coast crosswise over three school years (2010–11 to 2012–13). The research considered around a subset of forty-one educators who were a part of an arbitrary task in year three and students (and their instructors) who were surveyed for their attitudes and behaviour during three years.

The key result of the research was that the teachers considerably influenced students attitudes and behaviour. The biggest impact was on students’ happiness in class, for which a 1.00 standard deviation (SD) increment in teacher prompted a generally 0.30 SD increment in that result.

The conclusion that can be drawn is that the teachers’ emotional state is directly related to students’ emotional state and performance. To positively impact the students’ mood, teachers should ignore using phrases that reflect anger and frustration, they should also not use phrases that have negative connotations. Teachers should create a positive environment in their class by inculcating a sense of responsibility among their students.

Source: https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/how-teachers-affect-students-attitudes-and-behavior

Wizar.io – Cloud-Based Personalized Tool and Virtual School

WizAR.io – A Learning Measurement System (LMS) specially crafted for middle-school students, it accurately measures the learning and the learning gaps of students by using the latest in AI technology . WizAR.io promotes independent learning while maintaining continuity from school to home.
Students can access learning modules mapped to their curriculum at home, while at the same time, guardians and teachers can follow and measure the student’s performance. WizAR.io is a One-platform solution for all stakeholders – Students, Teachers, and Parents.

Wizario is virtual school is a flexible and far more connected tool; it enables teachers to do more than just ‘downloadable meetings.’

Wizario makes online learning journey richer and enjoyable for students as well as teachers. It enables teachers:

1. To schedule remote classes within just a few clicks.

2. To assign learning resources, (which include videos, infographics and other learning resources) through its extensive library.

3. To cater to all learning needs through the three-step process: instruction, self-learning and assessment.