Education is based on curriculums, but the latest EdTech is already forcing schools, colleges, and universities to review their systems and expectations. Roger James Hamilton looks at how fast changes are happening and how this will affect education.
EdTech has taken a huge step forward with the advent of the much-discussed ChatGPT – among many other AI apps that directly impact how students work and, consequently, how education is delivered.
As the world of business has moved into Society 5.0, where growth lies in relationships and communities, and technology has changed from being the driver to becoming the servant, it makes sense that education has to keep up.
You can argue that students are already ahead of the curve adopting new technology faster than the older generations. And they understand the concept of the Metaverse through the collaborative online games many of them have played for years – but what about the educational establishment?
Hybrid learning
It’s not just about having access to technology; schools today are already there with digital learning, technology, hardware in the form of interactive teaching aids, laptops for pupils, and much more, depending on the school’s resources.
The pandemic forced teachers to switch to virtual lessons, conducting online sessions where students logged into the virtual classroom instead of walking into an actual room. Despite this, a great deal of discussion has taken place about the damage that period of distance learning has had on students who were at the exam stage during this period.
Exams didn’t take place, because nobody had found a way that precluded the use of digital knowledge to support the students’ responses. Instead, the burden of assessment was placed on the teachers – for which few thanks were received as the press made a big deal about the ‘damage’ to students’ future prospects.
As soon as it was possible, students returned to the classroom and things went back to ‘normal’. The technology that allows virtual lessons were, in the main, no longer needed, but it represents an enormous opportunity.
Not every student thrives in a classroom environment – for example children on the autism spectrum or with other mental disabilities, children who are particularly shy or have experienced bullying at school, children who are behind or ahead of their peers in progress, and children whose parents have chosen to home-school them.
Online learning offers a brilliant opportunity for these students to access the learning they need, without having to experience some of the negative influences of an environment that doesn’t suit them. They can progress at the pace they need to, without feeling they are holding others back or getting bored because they’re way ahead of their classmates. Children with ongoing health issues would no longer need to forfeit their learning if they could access lessons digitally.
Merging online and offline learning provides the educational establishment with an amazing way to create a flexible learning approach that can easily be tailored to individual needs.
Learning to work with evolving tech
ChapGPT is an AI app that has recently hit the headlines. It allows the user to dictate what they want and uses AI to write what has been asked for. Students have already discovered that they can ask it to write a 1200-word essay on Queen Elizabeth 1’s role in influencing feminism – and ChatGPT can deliver a result, culled from all the information on the world wide web, that is coherent, logical, and written in good English – virtually immediately. What impact has this had on students’ homework assignments?
Students who are gamers may be familiar with Discord and their recent addition of the Mid-journey bot, which creates a professional image to your written description, and HumanPal.io which creates a human avatar that will deliver a video presentation. And these are just a few examples of the latest AI that is available to students to support their learning.
The immediate reaction from the teaching fraternity is that these apps are making it impossible for them to judge a student’s abilities and learning. Very little has been said about the opportunities they offer.
The world is changing – and while I don’t deny that learning is important, the ability to discover the information you want is as important. A worldwide cache of information on every conceivable subject is available at the tap of a screen. Successful people don’t know everything – but they do know how to find out what they need to know.
The curriculum in education at every level will need to change to accommodate the latest technology and all the opportunities it offers to enhance student’s educational experience – and their futures.
As someone commented ‘Your job won’t be taken by AI but may be taken by someone who knows how to use AI.’
By Roger James Hamilton, Founder of the Genius Group
Featured Photo by Om siva Prakash on Unsplash
