PROCESS AUTOMATION

Examples of Artificial Intelligence

in Education

Last updated on November 21, 2019, published by Daniel Faggella

Daniel Faggella is Head of Research at Emerj. Called upon by the United Nations, World Bank, INTERPOL,
and leading enterprises, Daniel is a globally sought-after expert on the competitive strategy implications of AI
for business and government leaders.
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Though yet to become a standard in schools, artificial intelligence in education

has been taught since AI’s uptick in the 1980s. In many ways, the two seem
made for each other. We use education as a means to develop minds capable
of expanding and leveraging the knowledge pool, while AI provides tools for
developing a more accurate and detailed picture of how the human mind
works.

AI’s digital, dynamic nature also offers opportunities for student engagement
that cannot be found in often out-dated textbooks or in the fixed environment
 of the typical four-walled classroom. In synergistic fashion, they each have the
potential to propel the other forward and accelerate the discovery of new
learning frontiers and the creation of innovative technologies. Some of this
observation is explored further in our AI Future Scape series where we
examine how the leaders of tomorrow in businesses and governments are
educated on AI practices and will thus, play a key role in the future of AI’s
development.

In this article we provided examples of ways in which AI is being pioneered

and applied in education. While the applications included are in use in some
form today, one could argue that most are still in a relatively “primitive” stage
in terms of envisioned long-term objectives.

Specifically, we explore:

 Smart Content –  Technology that attempts to condense text books into

useful tool for exam preparation such as true or false questions

 Intelligent Tutoring Systems – Personalized electronic tutoring customized

to the learning styles and preferences of the pupil

 Virtual Facilitators and Learning Environments – Virtual human guides and

facilitators for use in a variety of educational and therapeutic environments

Out of those provided, intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) seem to have made
the most progress over the last 20 years, as one of the original concepts for
applications of AI in education. All have the potential to help shape a next
generation of more personalized learning and responsive teaching. Our CEO
Daniel dives deeper into the near-term future of Online Education and AI on
an episode of our podcast, AI in Industry.

We first present an example of Smart Content utilizing machine

learning/artificial intelligence in education.
Examples of Artificial Intelligence in Education
Smart Content

“Smart content” creation, from digitized guides of textbooks to customizable

learning digital interfaces, are being introduced at all levels, from elementary
to post-secondary to corporate environments.

Content Technologies, Inc., an artificial intelligence development company

specializing in automation of business processes and intelligent instruction
design, has created a suite of smart content services for secondary education
and beyond. Cram101, for example, uses AI to help disseminate and
breakdown textbook content into digestible “smart” study guide that includes
chapter summaries, true-false and multiple choice practice tests, and
flashcards. JustTheFacts101 has a similar, though more streamlined purpose
— highlighting and creating text and chapter-specific summaries, which are
then archived into a digital collection and made available on Amazon.

Other companies are creating smart digital content platforms, complete with

content delivery, practice exercises, and real-time feedback and
assessment. Netex Learning, for example, allows educators to design digital
curriculum and content across devices, integrating rich media like video and
audio, as well as self- or online-instructor assessment. Nextex also provides a
personalized learning cloud platform designed for the modern workplace, in
which employers can design customizable learning systems with apps;
gamification and simulations; virtual courses; self assessments; video
conferencing; and other tools. Learning platforms for the modern workplace
are designed to allow employees to master additional skills and receive
continuous and automated feedback, and when used strategically have the
potential to help improve performance and increase production.

Intelligent Tutoring Systems

Mastery learning, a set of principles largely tied to the work of Educational

Psychologist Benjamin Bloom in the 1970’s, supports the effectiveness of
individualized tutoring and instruction in the classroom. Curriculum organized
around a student’s progress, combined with timely targeted feedback,
immediate opportunities for corrected practice, and enrichment activities, are
fundamental mastery learning practices. Developing a one-on-one tutoring
system that can provide these elements has been a coveted goal
of AI researchers since the 1970’s and 1980’s.

Intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) have made much progress since their early
counterparts. Though today’s systems, as articulated by Chaudhri, et al.,
(2013), are not quite at the “two-sigma effect” (i.e. two grade levels) of human
tutors, there’s evidence to suggest that ITS systems perform as well, if not
better, than individual human tutors for many students.

Carnegie Learning’s “Mika” software, for example, uses cognitive science and
AI technologies to provide personalized tutoring and real-time feedback for
post-secondary education students, particularly incoming college freshman
who would otherwise need remedial courses. Carnegie states the cost of such
remedial learning as costing colleges $6.7 billion annually, with only a 33%
success rate for math courses. ITS provides the potential for students to more
conveniently access flexible and more personalized modes of learning on an
ongoing basis.
Carnegie Learning’s Mika platform

Pearson, in collaboration with University College London Knowledge Lab,

notes that today’s model-based adaptive systems are also increasingly
transparent, allowing educators to understand how a system arrived at a next-
step decision and rendering them more effective tools for classroom teaching.
For example, the iTalk2Learn system16, a system engineered and tested by
Carnegie Mellon University to assess its effects on young students learning
fractions, applied a learner model that explicitly included information about an
individual’s mathematics knowledge, cognitive needs, emotional state, as well
as feedback received and the students’ responses in turn.

Virtual Facilitators and Learning Environments

While it seems obvious that no one in education is eager for virtual humans to
come and replace educators, the idea of creating virtual human guides and
facilitators for use in a variety of educational and therapeutic environments is
a promising area of development. Though not yet a reality, the ultimate goal in
this field is to create virtual human-like characters who can think, act, react,
and interact in a natural way, responding to and using both verbal and
nonverbal communication.

The University of Southern California (USC) Institute for Creative

Technologies is a pioneer in creating smart virtual environments and
applications that draw on AI, 3-D gaming, and computer animation to develop
authentic virtual characters and realistic social interactions. USC researchers
have a number of ongoing projects in the space that hint at applications to
come over the next two decades.
USC Creative Technologies’ SimCoach Prototype

Captivating Virtual Instruction for Training (CVIT), for example, is a distributed

learning strategy that aims to integrate live classroom methods with best-fit
virtual technologies—including virtual facilitators, augmented reality, intelligent
tutor, and others—in remote learning and training programs. It’s worth
visiting USC’s Creative Technologies prototype page and exploring the many
other initiatives currently under development, from immersive training
counseling for Army leaders to a personal assistant (PAL3) for life-long
learning.

Paving New Learning Pathways in the Coming Decade

Education is a domain largely ruled by human-to-human interaction, and

integration of AI has been slower to develop the necessary human-like
attributes of responsiveness, adaptability, and understanding. Yet there are
plenty of areas where AI’s inherent strengths help fill high-need “gaps” in
learning and teaching.

AI’s ability to analyze large amounts of data in real-time (a student’s

performance in a particular skill across subjects over the course of a year, for
example) and automatically provide new content or specified learning
parameters, helps meet students’ need for continual, targeted practice and
feedback and also allows teachers to better understand student performance
and orchestrate more effective personalized learning plans.

Woolf, et al., (2013) has proposed five key areas for ongoing researching in
educating using AI:

1. Mentors for every learner

2. Learning 21st century skills
3. Interaction data for learning
4. Universal access to global classrooms
5. Life-long and life-wide learning
The above seems a useful framework for framing objectives and generating
aligned ideas, as researchers and companies continue to move forward in
developing AI applications in education.
Not to be overlooked is the apparent fear that human educators can or will be
replaced by AI technologies in the coming decade. As AI advances in this
domain, it seems there is more evidence to support the idea that both
intelligent systems and humans are needed to manage different aspects of
students’ academic and social competencies. AI will likely not replace but will
serve as an invaluable extension of the human expert, helping teachers to
more effectively meet the diverse needs of many students simultaneously.

Image credit: Michael Morgenstern and The Economist