Despite learning being one of the most important aspects of a young adult’s development, our educational system hasn’t been advancing at the same rate as some of the other industries. The classrooms and curricula used for our children’s education today are still primarily based on the principles of the Victorian age.

This is a growing concern, especially for students in developing nations, where the language barrier creates additional challenges — like a lack of educational material in the country’s native language, forcing teachers to substitute with translations of often outdated material.

To give young scholars worldwide equal opportunities, the field of education is poised to transform. Artificial intelligence (AI) is emerging as one of the most promising technologies, transforming the academic industry. Below, we’ll take a look at how AI is already impacting students’ lives and other exciting developments on the horizon.

Four Ways AI Is Transforming Education

• Solving the language barrier issue

The evolution of machine translations has ushered in a new era of online content democratization, which is poised to find its way to the field of education.

AI-powered machine translation engines like Google Translate, are already capable of near-instant, on-demand translations in 133 languages. Although the accuracy of these translations for most languages is approximately 85%, deep learning algorithms are slowly making machine translation engines smarter and more accurate.

As machine translations become more accurate and human-like, AI algorithms could be applied to eradicate the language barrier in education and democratize access to educational materials in non-English speaking countries.

• Improve education quality through advanced insights

In most industries, AI has been adopted due to its capacity to assess and analyze massive amounts of data in order to generate comprehensive predictive models and insights. Applying AI algorithms to student data could unlock unprecedented insights that improve the quality of education.

AI can factor in virtually countless aspects of learning, like academic performance, learning patterns, individual student performance, and the most challenging areas of study, just to name a few. This could lead to AI-powered prediction models that could be used by teachers to find the most challenging lessons, identify the students who struggle most with the material, and offer insights on how to improve one’s learning patterns on an individual basis. 

Machine learning algorithms could help finetune these predictive algorithms, which in turn could be used to continuously update the curriculum, as student demands change over time.

• Increase teacher productivity via task automation 

According to data by OECD, only an average of 43% of teachers’ working time is spent on teaching, as the rest is taken up by administrative work, planning lessons, and grading tests.

Through AI, teachers could automate the most repetitive, non-teaching tasks, like administrative work, assessing student performance, grading papers, and correcting homework. Moreover, AI algorithms could also help with the time-intensive planning process of lessons and tests. Applying AI-based automation tools could make teachers more productive by freeing up their time — allowing them to dedicate more of it to students in need.

Early iterations of AI automation tools like ProProfs Quiz Maker are already being used to help teachers become more productive, by creating personalized tests with automated grading systems.

• Personalized learning for each individual student

Our current educational system is based on a “one-size-fits-all” approach, where all students are thought the same curriculum, using the same methods, regardless of their individual differences.

AI-based recommendation engines could help cater to each student’s individual needs, by analyzing their personality traits, knowledge, speed of learning, learning history, and more — to generate personalized courses based on their strengths and weaknesses.

Teachers clearly can’t offer personalized attention to an entire classroom, but AI-powered recommendation engines can create individual learning experiences down to every student.

This could help increase academic performance by preemptively addressing the weaknesses of each student, offering more relevant learning materials, and hastening the learning process through capitalizing on one’s strengths.

An early example of this is Carnegie Learning — an AI-powered smart tutorial platform that helps teachers personalize the learning experience according to each student’s strengths and weaknesses.

The Role of AI in the Future of Education

Teachers worldwide are hoping to see a more student-oriented educational system, where the strengths and weaknesses of each individual are complemented with personalized curricula and more relevant learning experiences.

Tomorrow’s AI-powered educational system could soon eradicate global language barriers thanks to translation engines, while offering 24/7 learning support to struggling students through AI chatbots. But the adoption of artificial intelligence will depend on the technology’s advancements, as most AI applications are still heavily reliant on human oversight to function and evolve.

For instance, AIWORK — a platform specialized in AI machine transcription and translation  — is combining advanced AI algorithms with a network of human experts to validate the AI-generated metadata and apply it to deep learning algorithms that make their artificial intelligence smarter.

Similar hybrid initiatives combining the realms of human and artificial intelligence are the only way forward to advancing the machine translation and artificial intelligence industries before fully-autonomous AI applications can democratize access to education worldwide.