From Astrophysics to Zoology, AI is entering university classrooms to enhance education
In their workshop, “Generative AI for Education (GAIED): Advances, Opportunities, and Challenges,” presented at NeurIPS23 (Neural Information Processing Systems23) and published in February 2024, researchers from University of Auckland, Microsoft, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, the École Spéciale de Lausanne, Carnegie Mellon University, Carleton College, and the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems to help researchers, educators, and practitioners understand how best to incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) into classrooms.
The program focused on two key issues educators face as this groundbreaking technology asserts itself in the educational process:
- “GAI→ED: Exploring how recent advances in generative AI provide new opportunities to drastically improve state-of-the-art educational technology.
- ED→GAI: Identifying unique challenges in education caused by these recent advances and how to tackle them by bringing in desired safeguards along with technical innovations in generative AI.”
Learning to grade AI’s role in the classroom
What the study sought to understand was how AI can play a role in personalizing content generation, provide instructors with tools to better evaluate of a student’s work, the role of AI as a digital tutor and to encapsulate educators recent experience using AI in the classroom. On the flip side, the researchers contemplated some of the risks of deploying AI in the classroom, such as an overreliance on AI in the teaching process may impeded learning because students may not be adequately cognitively engaged in their lessons when interacting with a machine as compared to an instructor.
When it comes to incorporating AI in curricula, student evaluations, or as a digital teaching tool, the smart money says “Buyer beware.”
See the full study here.
Top 3 Takeaways
▪ AI in the classroom presents opportunities to enhance the teaching and learning process.
▪ AI in the classroom poses a risk of students being insufficiently engaged in learning when a computer is responsible for dispensing knowledge and assessing students’ performance.
▪ Relying too much on AI as part of the teaching process may be a hindrance to learning.
#AI #AI Today #artificial intelligence #education #NeurIPS #GAIED
