AI Trends: Shaping the Future of Education
- Aleksandra Magnitskaia
- Nov 13, 2024
- 3 min read
Updated: Nov 19, 2024
When I started my teaching journey 15 years ago, I could never have imagined that technology would evolve rapidly and significantly impact education. The idea of applying AI in education practices looked like something out of a sci-fi movie. Yet, here we are, starting a new era in which AI is set to change how we educate ourselves, each other, our children, and future generations.
Reflecting on my curriculum-developing experience, I remember the hours spent aligning the learning objectives with Bloom's Taxonomy, university requirements, and my learners' needs. Last week, I completed similar tasks in just 15 minutes with the help of AI. This time-saving aspect of AI is a promising sign for educators, relieving us of administrative burdens and allowing us to focus more on the actual teaching and learning process. Or will it put additional responsibilities on our work? Or even erase all the need for learning developers in time?
The transformative potential of AI is explored in "Generative AI and Educators: Partnering in Using Open Digital Content for Transforming Education" (van den Berg, 2024). The article highlights the need to co-exist with AI in the education landscape and provide personalized support to students. A number of concerns arise as well, as the author stresses the questionable nature of AI's reliability. There is a strong demand for solid ethical guidance, developing digital literacy, and formatting institutional policies. The integration of AI in education has already started, yet there is still more to do to empower this process with best practices.
Similarly, the article "Utilizing Generative AI for Instructional Design: Exploring Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats" by Choi et al. (2024) describes the role of AI in the instructional design process. The authors conclude that AI significantly speeds up course creation, as one of AI's strengths is generating creative ideas and structuring outlines. However, a human role in the process remains leading as AI lacks expertise and is unable to ensure the best quality and accuracy.
These reflections remind me of ongoing concerns among educators about the future of education. Fortunately, many universities and colleges adapt quickly and develop programs for educators to turn AI into a reliable assistant and helper rather than fear losing the competition. Not all institutions keep up with the trend, but the adaptability of others might be a great example to follow.
The technologies depend on human checking and guidance, so staying critical is essential.
UNESCO has also weighed in on this transformation. On July 4, 2024, in Athens, Greece, UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Education, Stefania Giannini, emphasized the potential of AI to revolutionize education. During her address at the Onassis Foundation's festival on artificial intelligence, Giannini stressed the importance of ethical guidelines and competency frameworks in using AI. These thoughts mirror the insights of Gibson et al. (2022), who advocate for educators and learners to co-design learning experiences in this evolving AI-powered landscape. All these developments have inspired me to take a course on integrating AI into my work and better understand its capabilities. I need to learn as much as possible about AI to better prepare myself for the new challenges my profession faces. For now, we all have more questions than answers, and to my mind, there can be no better key to open this new door than to do what we all used to do thousands of years before—to learn. In the end, I want to share an inspiring performance of Sal Khan's at TED Talk, where the founder and CEO of Khan Academy delivers his thoughts on the future of AI in education.
In my next post, I will dive deeper and reflect on the course I recently completed at the University of Michigan: Exploring Generative AI for Instructional Design. Stay tuned!
References
Choi, G. W., Kim, S. H., Lee, D., & Moon, J. (2024). Utilizing generative AI for instructional design: Exploring strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. TechTrends, 68(1), 32–44. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-024-00967-w
Gibson, D. C., Ifenthaler, D., & Dondlinger, M. J. (2022). Learning theories for artificial intelligence promoting learning processes. Computers and Education: Artificial Intelligence, 3, 100008. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.caeai.2022.100008
TEDx Talks. (2021, October 12). The power of self-belief: Unleashing your inner potential [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJP5GqnTrNo
UNESCO. (2023). Generation AI: Navigating the opportunities and risks of artificial intelligence in education. UNESCO. Retrieved from https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/generation-ai-navigating-opportunities-and-risks-artificial-intelligence-education
van den Berg, G. (2024). Generative AI and educators: Partnering in using open digital content for transforming education. Open Praxis, 16(2),
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