It took me decades to understand how I learn best, if only we had a tool that could identify the learning style of our students and help us teach them individually 😊. This is exactly what this post “AI – everything is personal (personalization)” talks about.
Much ink has been spilled on the topic of personalization in education, but when they come to implement it, they find that it requires a lot of effort from the teacher and is not really applicable, and in the end they aim for the center of the curve, losing many students along the way and hoping that the students will sort it out after the army.
For the first time in two thousand years, there is a chance that it will be possible to give an individual approach to each and every student in the class, and the wonderful teacher will work less on boring assignments and will be able to concentrate on education and study. How will this magic happen? Well, we don’t know yet, but we obviously have an infrastructure today that has a good chance of being able to do it. For example, 15 years ago, a global application that would locate the nearest restroom would not have occurred. Today, with the smartphone infrastructure, such an application is a piece of cake (by the way, there is already one).
I will start with a script and try to see what is needed to implement it: a teacher who teaches a subject, let’s say congruence of triangles, to the 8th grade with 30 students of different levels of personal abilities and knowledge of mathematics.
In order to be successful, the teacher must understand the required material (congruent triangles), know the students’ abilities, their prior knowledge, convey the required material in an interesting way, locate students who have difficulty and advance them individually, practice the required material with assignments at several levels so that both the beginners and the advanced will be able to progress at their own pace, check the assignments and adjust the study plan accordingly…
Where artificial intelligence can help the teacher (I will only examine the preparation/execution/testing of an assignment):
The system follows the student over time (not just congruent triangles), it knows his abilities, his preferences, and his study style (for example in the evening, with music in the background, and with the help of visual examples). So when she comes to create an assignment for a student, she will create a unique assignment that suits the student in terms of the content, the method of submission and the environment.
The system “observes” the student while performing the assignment, using dozens of different parameters such as hesitation at a certain point, repeated erasures, the duration of each sub-assignment and also physical parameters such as sweating, pulse, blinking eyes. From all the information, the system locates the subjects that the student masters or requires reinforcement. For example, during the assignment, the system recognizes that the student has difficulty with angles and recommends strengthening the subject before delving deeper into congruent triangles.
If the student gets stuck during the assignment, the system can help the student move to the next step and indicates that the area where the student had difficulty should be strengthened. At the end of the assignment, the system provides the teacher with a summary of the strengths and weaknesses in solving the assignment.
I have invented a system here that does not exist, but as mentioned the infrastructure of understanding the material, understanding language, drawing conclusions and even understanding human nature exists, so at the moment, the distance to create such system is not great.
HE