This course has been designed to study the impact of Artificial Intelligence on the practitioners of Educational Media. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, a ‘practitioner’ is someone who engages in a job or activity that requires skill. In the context of mass media, these practitioners include journalists, editors, writers, reporters, and so on. However, when looking from a perspective of using media in the realm of education in general and the teaching-learning process in particular, one such practitioner who plays an important role in that domain is the ‘Teacher.’ The readings and video selected for this course focus on how AI has the potential to work as a teacher assistant to design and implement pedagogic interventions for an effective learning environment for students.
Students are at the center of the learning environment where teachers design and choose the teaching-learning materials, and pedagogic interventions based on the need and context of the students and also the level of scaffolding required by them. Hence, students also play a huge role in shaping the usage and design of artificial intelligence in educational media. Therefore, the selected content also focuses on how AI helps to improve the learning potential and learning purpose of students.
1. Research Paper
“The impact of Artificial Intelligence on learner–instructor interaction in online learning”
By- Kyoungwon Seo, Joice Tang, Ido Roll, Sidney Fels, and Dongwook Yoon. | International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education.
https://educationaltechnologyjournal.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s41239-021-00292-9
This paper explores how learner-instructor interaction is impacted by using Artificial Intelligence in digital learning. Through this study, they tried to understand how ‘communication’ between students and instructors, ‘presence’ of the instructor, and ‘support’ provided by the instructor in the form of feedback function as major factors in developing an effective and collaborative online learning environment. For the research, they conducted semi-structured interviews with students and instructors to gauge their reflection on the effect of AI-integrated online education on learner-instructor interaction.
The researchers analyzed the responses of the participants and coded them into six central themes: Quantity and Quality, Responsibility, Support, Agency, Connection, and Surveillance. The findings highlighted that the students and instructors had some positive and negative perceptions of the impact of AI on online learning. Both students and instructors had a positive perception that AI helps in providing just-in-time personalized learning and support. Instructors stated that as AI helps to answer more simple and repetitive questions, it saves time on the part of the instructor to engage in more meaningful conversations with students. Based on the theme of agency, students stated that standardized assistance from AI might have a negative effect on their learning. Instructors also had a negative perception of
this aspect. They responded that too much dependence on AI could hamper students’ ability to explore and discover. Instructors also highlighted concerns about the student-instructor conflicts due to misunderstandings caused by AI.
The study also provided some practical implications to address the misconceptions of students and instructors about AI and to improve the impact of AI on learning communication, and feedback systems. They stated that it is important to provide AI literacy to those students and instructors who do not have a technological background. They also suggested that the AI systems must focus on the careful data collection process and its presentation. The AI tool developers should also employ a human-in-the-loop approach to improve AI models’ output ability and accuracy.
2. Report
“Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Teaching and Learning” By- Department of Education | United States of America.
https://www2.ed.gov/documents/ai-report/ai-report.pdf
This report provides the key insights and recommendations on AI in education. It addresses the potential of AI in the educational realm with a policy development perspective. The report stated that it is necessary to address it because of three important reasons. First is that Artificial intelligence has the potential to achieve educational goals in a cost-effective and better manner. Second is the potential risks that might affect the stakeholders of education in the long run. Third is the unwanted consequences that arise while using AI to teach and learn.
The report holistically touched upon areas like building policies on the issues related to safety and ethics, defining AI with multiple perspectives, teaching-learning with AI, assessment, and so on.
When analyzed from the perspective of teachers as educational media practitioners, chapter 5 of “Teaching” talks about how AI could address several issues that teachers face during their educational journey. The strong argument that the report presents is that they stand against the general notion of “AI replacing teachers.” They believe that to debunk this notion, educators should always take the central role in the instructional loop where they have the agency to participate in selecting the designs based on AI models, preparing the teaching-learning materials, planning their pedagogical interventions, and reflecting on their teaching.
Another important stakeholder who plays a vital role in the development of educational media is the student. Chapter 4 on “Learning” states that AI models should have an asset-based orientation where they focus on how to build on the competencies and strengths of students. Along with developing cognitive abilities, these models should also take into account the development of learners’ social skills. On the part of the teachers, while designing and using AI-based tools for teaching, it is necessary to keep in mind that these tools must align with the context of the learners as it is important not to fragment the content and the appropriate context.
3. Video Content
“How AI Could Save (Not Destroy) Education” By Sal Khan | TED
In recent times, we read many news articles where teachers of various universities and schools raised their concerns about the unethical use of Artificial Intelligence based models by students to write their assignments. Many teachers around the world also raise questions about these models creating a hindrance in the learning of the students. However, the founder of Khan Academy, Sal Khan, in this video presents an argument where he not only talks about the ways to mitigate the issues concerning the ethical use of AI but also about how AI can and is bringing positive changes in the educational landscape.
Their company has developed an AI system named “Khanmigo” which aims to provide teaching assistance to teachers and one-on-one tutoring to students. The tutor mode of the chatbot is specifically designed to help teachers design how to teach a particular topic interactively. It helps them to create interesting lesson plans, develop progress reports, and evaluate students. This helps teachers save time and invest it in more human interaction with students.
The student mode of the chatbot helps them with subjects like math, history, and creative writing. Chatbot asks students to solve different math problems. It also explains the stepwise procedure to solve them. Another interesting feature of the chatbot is it functions on the principle of “thinking before speaking.” It analyses the procedure used by students to solve a particular problem. If it finds any mistake, it does not disclose it to the students. Rather it asks the students to explain how they have reached that step. This way the AI is helping the students to self-assess their work by simultaneously providing feedback and continuous guidance. This feature helps develop skills like analysis, and reflection so that students become self-reliant in the longer run.
The speaker stated that in recent times, there are two different arguments for the usage of AI in the field of education. On the one hand, some people support it while on the other hand, there are also people who present strong opinions against its incorporation into the educational realm. However, what the speaker believes is that our role is not just to see which side wins. Our role is to actively participate in thinking and deciding on how to use AI to make teaching and learning effective. The active role consists of:
- Using AI in education to develop an interactive and engaging teaching-learning environment.
- Putting reasonable regulations to counter the unethical use of AI.
- Working on how to use AI in such a way that it enhances the intelligence, potential, and purpose of human beings.
4. Article
“In China, online tools to level up learning in remote areas.”
By- SU Peng | UNESCO
https://courier.unesco.org/en/articles/china-online-tools-level-learning-remote-areas
The article states that in 2021 the Chinese Ministry of Education stated that in China, as a result of the growth in the urban sector and the decline in student enrolment in rural schools, the number of schools in the rural areas keeps falling. Providing quality education to children residing in rural areas, in subjects like music, arts, and, information communication and technology is becoming a major challenge. The gap in learning and education between rural and urban residents is widening.
The Chinese government and corporate organizations are now capitalizing on digital technology to bridge the rural-urban educational gap. A company named ‘Tencent’ has introduced a digital volunteer teacher training project. More than 10,000 people are part of this project. These volunteer teachers are providing teaching assistance in online mode to more than 1000 schools in rural areas.
The digital platform designed by the company has many functions such as curriculum designing, teaching, and volunteer recruitment. Research also showed improvement in students’ knowledge base and thinking skills as a result of virtual classes.
A big concern in rural schools is that teachers lack the right skills to use digital infrastructure in the teaching-learning process. To tackle the problem, the Chinese government and enterprises have started using Artificial intelligence to create teacher training resources and share them with schools.
Professor Feng Xiaoying from Beijing Normal University suggested the use of a “dual-teacher classroom model” where online teachers collaborate with local teachers to enhance the technical literacy of local teachers and develop a new model of research and teaching with the help of AI. Professor Feng also believed that AI and data analytics have the power to revolutionize teaching-learning and educational governance.
References
1. Cambridge Dictionary. (n.d.). “Practitioner”. In Cambridge.org dictionary. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/practitioner
2. Department of Education, U.S.A. (2023). Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Teaching and Learning. https://www2.ed.gov/documents/ai-report/ai-report.pdf
3. Seo, K., Tang, J., Roll, I., Fels, S., & Yoon, D. (2021). The impact of artificial intelligence on learner–instructor interaction in online learning. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education. https://educationaltechnologyjournal.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s41239-021-00292-9#citeas
4. TED. (2023, May 1). How AI Could Save (Not Destroy) Education [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJP5GqnTrNo
5. UNESCO. (2023). In China, online tools to level up learning in remote areas. https://courier.unesco.org/en/articles/china-online-tools-level-learning-remote-areas.
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