Recently I was reading an article in the newspaper. In that article, a college professor shared his experience about an assignment he gave to his students. The assignment was on one of the Shakespeare’s classics. The students submitted the assignments and the quality of the assignments completed, surprised the professor. The professor realized that most of the submissions were based on the content generated online using Chat GPT, a Gen AI tool.
Well, that was one example of using Gen AI in Education. Gen AI has the potential to Disrupt, Transform and Revolutionize the Education Sector.
Gen AI will change the way we learn and teach. The conventional ways used in education are already being challenged and enhanced with new ways of teaching and learning. We have seen on-demand training content in different formats like Text, Audio and Video. We have remote learning facility with scheduled trainings/lectures as well as On-demand training.
With the Advent of Gen AI, there are lot of other opportunities which will impact the Education Sector.
Advantages:
Saving Time for the Teachers: Gen AI provides an opportunity to create content super quick, thus saving a lot of time for teachers. This helps the teachers to focus on other important aspects which include but not limited to personalized attention and needs of the learners, create rich and meaningful content, and also enhance their individual learnings.
Personalized Content: Gen AI can help generate personalized content in terms of learning material based on the set criteria. It provides options to cater to different capabilities in terms of language, mode of learning and type of content.
Learning Assistant: An AI based assistant will add value and enhance the learning and teaching experience. This option provides opportunity to provide content based on individual requirements. It also provides on demand learning opportunity. It will also address the language constraints.
Addressing people with special needs: Gen AI and the AI based tools will improve the existing ways the methods of Teaching/Learning for the people with special needs. The tools like Text-to-Speech, Speech-to-Text, Computer vision, tools addressing accessibility issues will transform the training scenario for people with special needs.
Assessments and Grading Techniques: Gen AI also provides increased options for better, improved Assessments and Grading techniques. It can create personalized assessment criteria along with the grading parameters. It will provide a whole analysis about the areas of improvement and focus.
While there will be lot more options and avenues which will factor in the transformation of the Education sector using Gen AI, there are drawbacks as well.
Disadvantages:
Copyright Issues: While the content is created, generated and made available to teachers and learners, it will also come with many copyright issues. There is a need to address and agree on how to handle the copyright issues.
Data Privacy: Data privacy is another problem which needs to be handled. While Gen AI generates content, it needs to be filtered to avoid data privacy issues. This is one of the most important concerns which needs to be addressed.
Cyber Security: Cyber Security will be another area of concern as a lot of teaching and learning based interactions will be through internet. There is a risk of security concerns like phishing, hacking and similar vulnerabilities.
Losing Human Connect: While there are lot of advantages of learning online, remote using AI based assistants, or different types of content available online, it lacks the basic human touch. No matter what happens, most of us will still look around for a human connect for various aspects in education.
Conclusion:
There are multiple advantages and use cases which will be addressed by using AI and Gen AI in the Education sector.
It provides an opportunity to reskill to keep the pace with the advancement in the technology. The teachers/learners need to adapt to the changing technological advances.
The downside remains in terms of accuracy of content, the privacy issues and copyright violations amongst other issues.
The AI based tools would lose out on the human interaction and natural connect.
With all these pros and cons, GEN AI is here to stay!!!
