Shahnaz Husain, the renowned beauty maestro receives the “World’s Greatest Woman Entrepreneur” Award from Success, the New York-based business magazine, becoming the first woman in the world in 104 years to receive the prestigious Success Award. Ms. Husain has been the recipient of several prestigious international awards during her career and this one would be another golden feather in her cap. Shahnaz Husain is the quintessential entrepreneur who recently received the ‘Promoting Ayurveda Worldwide’ and ‘Ayurveda Excellence’ Awards in the British Parliament. She also became a Harvard Case Study on Brand Creation. Now, she is a Harvard subject and part of the curriculum for “Emerging Markets.”
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is impacting our lives in many ways. We seem to be going into a fascinating world of machines and robots, like some science fiction movie. And what do these machines do? They have been programmed to imitate human behaviour. According to John McCarthy, the father of Artificial Intelligence, it is “The science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer programs.”
As for Robots, they are programmed to perform tasks, like a human being. Many of them even resemble one! We have already seen how computers can be programmed to complete several tasks with speed and in much less time. They are based on how a human being thinks; they have memory and can recall past actions and can understand languages that human beings use. Indeed, Artificial Intelligence has been used in so many applications today. We are using them in various fields too, as diverse as playing games like chess, making a medical diagnosis, shopping, or for searches on the internet. As for the field of education, Artificial Intelligence promises to make the process of teaching and learning a great experience for both the teacher and the student.
Education can be personalised
Artificial Intelligence is being used in education in many ways. For one thing, computer programmes can help the student, much like a private tutor, so that the student learns according to his individual needs and gets individual attention. It can help the student to know where effort has to be made and also helps the teacher to know the individual capacity of the student. The teacher can also monitor the student’s performance and know where the weakness lies. In other words, it can be used to help students in the learning process. Experts say that AI can also help teachers in grading students.
Since technology is growing day by day, AI can really make the learning experience more productive. It will take individual differences into account among the students and provide all of them with education, whether the student is very advanced, or just average, or has learning disabilities. Artificial Intelligence systems can be such that the individual’s ability to learn will be considered and the lesson will be presented accordingly. Teaching can be customized through AI systems. Such systems will make it easier for students to get individual attention and certainly reduce stress among students.
Automate administrative tasks
Administrative tasks in the education sector such as assessment, grading, giving feedback, etc. accounts for a considerable chunk of the work on a regular basis which can be taken care of by the artificial intelligence. AI experts in the field of education also say that the students “receive feedback online or through text messages.” This saves the student the embarrassment of receiving negative feedbacks in front of classmates. The student can absorb the feedback better and make the recommended effort to change. With a teacher, human feelings may interfere; personal likes and dislikes, bias and prejudices may also influence the teacher. After all, the teacher is a human being! So, in such cases AI can be an advantage.
The fact remains that educators may be hesitant to bring about major changes in the educational and assessment systems. But, we can hardly ignore the solutions presented by Artificial Intelligence.
Mitigate accessibility issues
Artificial intelligence has the ability to create unified platforms which can be accessed by students across the world and even mitigate issues such as language barriers, visual or hearing impairments. There are applications that can easily translate whatever the teacher dictates during the class or even provide subtitles running simultaneous to the class. Such an avenue will provide a robust mechanism for how education is perceived as opposed to the traditional brick mortar structure, giving every student an opportunity to make their lives easier and self reliant.
Tutoring
It is not an uncommon practice for students to seek for out of the class help, which in conventional practice is provided by a tutor who visits them at a fixed time. However, have you ever given a thought to how a student supposed to clarify their doubts when the tutor does not come or at some untimely hour? This is where artificial intelligence can fill the gap and help the student carry on with their studies. AI powered chatbots and tutors can provide a system that can work all round the day and even facilitate communication between a human teacher and the student. For instance, a system that can be implemented for tutoring is through intelligent tutoring systems that help in providing personalised instruction and feedback to the students without the requirement of a human teacher.
Creating digital content
Artificial intelligence can help create digital content by using virtual textbooks, videos lesson and lectures and digital notes. AI can also empower human teachers to create interactive training sessions in order for the learner to undertake their study session as per their pace and requirements. Smart content are being very useful especially post the Covid 19 situation and are can help students belonging to various grades, be it elementary level, graduate or post graduate level.
Enhance teacher and student engagement
Education has become and can further become interesting and more engaging by incorporating artificial intelligence. Moreover, due to artificial intelligence’s innate ability of customization, the approaches to teaching will naturally be more effective and interesting for the pupils. Since they will be able to receive what is being taught in a method that is suitable for them, the likelihood of them paying their sole attention during class will be higher in comparison the traditional methods of teaching. Furthermore, use of visual representations such as graphs, charts, 3D images etc. for explanation of different concepts makes learning faster as has also been noted in various studies. AI-powered systems with touch screen abilities and machine learning for skill development can make education an interesting task instead of it being something that the students are made to do just for the sake of “learning”.