Effects of AI in Education: Benefits and Challenges

Effects of AI in Education: Benefits and Challenges (51 characters)

Today, the use of AI in education to understand topics, solve questions or summarize notes is common. But there are still many people who ask: Is AI in education actually making it better and what would happen to teachers as it becomes more advanced?

Usage of AI in education and many workplaces is constantly increasing as it’s getting more advanced. To keep up with the rise of this technology and to help students understand the use of it better, a workshop has been organized by IIT Kanpur, BHU and CSJMU. The workshop has been organized to spread awareness among students about AI’s use, assessment redesign, ethics and human mentorship. It has also been organized to bring educators, academic leaders, researchers and other stakeholders together to discuss the responsible use of AI in education, including mentorship.

What Does AI in Education Mean?

AI in education is about helping students navigate their studies better and understand concepts in detail even if they are hesitant to ask a teacher. Overall, it can also help them be a lot more independent in their learning and adapt the teaching to their learning pace.

Students can take help from AI tutors, personalized learning apps and writing assistants for various problems they might be facing while learning. However, even though AI can be a great tool, not every response it provides is accurate. Its responses still need to be checked carefully by the user.

How AI Can Help Students?

AI in education can help students by explaining and helping them understand difficult concepts in a much simpler and interactive manner. If they still don’t understand, they can ask the AI to explain it in a different way that suits their learning style. AI can also help them practice questions, use AI assistance to get feedback and see if they need to improve in a specific area.

These AI resources are especially good for people who can’t or couldn’t go to a regular school or college because of various reasons such as financial difficulties, living in a rural area without much access to good education, having a different or slower pace of learning, fear of discrimination or feeling uncomfortable in social situations.

Though we still need to remember that AI is still just a tool and students shouldn’t completely abandon their own independent critical thinking skills and the need for human mentorship and guidance. AI is good and useful but it shouldn’t be overused and hinder us from using our own brains.

How Teachers and Colleges Can Use AI in Education?

We understand AI in education and its usage by students, but what about teachers? Teachers can use it by taking its help to prepare practice questions, organize lesson material and even learn ways to explain their lessons better. Colleges can use AI to get learning support and newer, more interactive ways of tutoring. But teachers might still need to look at the AI-generated material, modify and adapt it based on what their students need and what their way of learning usually is.

Problems and Risks:

Even though AI in education could be an amazing tool if used correctly, it can still sometimes provide incorrect, misleading or incomplete information. So both students and teachers need to be aware of that.

Another problem could be that students use AI to fully write their assignments for them, instead of learning the subject, taking AI’s help and then writing it by themselves. Some people may also share personal information with AI or more specifically AI chatbots, which could interfere with their privacy.

Even though AI in education could be helpful, all the tools may not be available to everyone as some of them are paid, some of them are for specific devices and some people may not have internet access. So colleges shouldn’t completely rely on AI and set clear rules for its usage, so that if certain people can’t access certain tools, they still won’t get left behind.

Will AI in Education Change Exams and Assignments?

As students have started to integrate AI in education more, especially assignments, it’s getting tougher to evaluate the traditional take-home assignments, as teachers can’t tell if the student actually wrote it themselves or just copy-pasted from AI.

To resolve this problem, colleges could consider oral examinations, supervised tests, practical tasks and projects that requiring human reasoning and using big technical terms taken from AI wouldn’t be enough. Colleges could also introduce other assessment methods that clearly demonstrate students’ problem-solving skills. This is my own suggestion, not a proposal announced by the event organizers.

But these issues related to exams and assignments are going to be discussed at the workshop organized by IIT Kanpur, BHU and CSJMU, through expert sessions and open-mic discussions.

Why Human Teachers Still Matter?

As we discussed before, AI in education could help by explaining topics, solving questions and simplifying difficult to understand concepts, but that doesn’t mean teachers won’t be needed anymore. AI can explain topics but only a teacher can tell if the student is progressing, actually learning and getting the motivation they may need.

AI in education can help students solve questions or even write assignments but teachers play a big role in helping them develop soft skills like effective and professional communication, and teamwork. Teachers also help their students develop judgement and independent thinking.

AI in education is a helpful tool, teachers are necessary, but keeping up with the technology and current standards is also necessary. So what should we do? The answer is, teachers and mentors should combine AI in education with their own mentorship and guidance. AI in education should assist teachers rather than replace them. That way, students will be able to keep up with current standards of both the job market and even daily life that’s increasingly leaning towards AI usage.

AI gives us benefits but there should still be some limitations to its usage. AI in education could be really valuable but if it’s used incorrectly it could be harmful to students, teachers and probably even the institutions. So AI’s value depends on how responsibly students, teachers and institutions use it. A balanced education system would give its students access to these tools, but instill values in them that teach them to use it when it genuinely helps learning. It would teach them responsible usage of AI in education and also give them human mentorship that’s better and feels safer.