Will AI Strengthen or Weaken the Learning Experience? by Dr. Timothy Smith

Photo Source: Unsplash

The remarkable speed and quality of AI in summarizing complex documents, writing essays, and solving mathematical equations call into question the role of education in the new era of artificial intelligence. Will AI help educators and students learn better and faster, or will AI reduce intellectual rigor and critical thinking needed to produce the next generation of leaders, artists, scientists, and engineers? At the dawn of the United States, Thomas Jefferson relentlessly pressed the indispensable need for broad, public education to maintain a free country. He and others believed that people must understand freedom and liberty to protect them. One must comprehend liberty and its strengths and weaknesses to support it and accommodate its shortcomings.

At the heart of education lies an important tension between knowledge and criticism. Each person needs to learn the particulars of the world to build comprehension and use this knowledge to think critically and adapt to a changing world. Essay writing, contrary to what many students feel, does not function as a joyful reading exercise for their teachers. It serves to demonstrate to the teacher the degree to which a student tackles critical thinking about a subject and organizes their thoughts. The process of analysis still applies today, as ever in the classroom, and teachers have begun using AI tools to improve this process.

Teacher-student feedback, adaptive learning, and flexible modality all benefit from the introduction of AI in the classroom. AI can now generate essays in seconds that would have taken students hours or even days to write. While writing a term paper, students often had to turn in drafts at certain intervals to receive feedback from the teacher on the paper's quality and direction. A teacher facing tens or hundreds of drafts and papers cannot respond to everyone's work at once with the same attention. That human limitation can slow the quality and timeliness of teacher-student interaction. Now, teachers can help students use AI as a sounding board for feedback on their work with well-crafted prompts. Such immediate feedback for students can speed up writing, and teachers can also help students use LLMs as a sounding board for their work. Additionally, teachers can add a step to the process that grades students' evaluations of the LLM's responses, teaching students to think critically about the AI's responses.

Adaptive learning that adjusts to the needs of individual students only really applies to the tutorial model of teaching, where each student has a one-on-one relationship with their teacher. Given the cost of education and the large number of students compared to teachers, the tutorial model remained impractical at scale until the introduction of large language models over the past few years. Teachers can now use LLMs to analyze and adapt learning in science and math for individual learners. For example, if a student does well with certain elements of a biology course, such as ecosystem dynamics, but struggles with genetics, the teacher can use LLMs to tailor the education to focus on genetics, using specific examples and problem sets to bring this area of study to the forefront. Another student may have a different set of strengths and weaknesses that a teacher can address simultaneously with AI.

Not every student learns in the same way. Research has shown that about 65% of people learn best visually, while 30% learn through listening and discussion. The remaining 5% of learners fall into the kinesthetic, or hands-on, learning group. In practice, people overlap somewhat in their learning styles, and teachers will try to adapt their lessons to incorporate aspects of each type in their presentation of the material. With AI able to generate different teaching modalities, teachers can adapt a lesson to different learners in real time. A teacher can generate visual materials for the visual learners almost instantly with AI and modify the presentation for aural learners with no additional effort. The array of available teaching modalities will significantly expand any teacher's reach.

Jefferson stressed the necessity of an educated citizenry for the preservation of American democracy. Moreover, an increasingly technological society needs exceptional thinkers, leaders, artists, and engineers to guide and shape the implementation of technology for the benefit of all. The new AI tools available to educators that emulate a more personal, tutorial style of education, improve feedback, focus on areas of greatest need, and open access to different learning styles amplify the educational process. AI does not have to undermine critical thinking by doing students' work. Instead, it opens the door to more amplified teachers and richer learning experiences for students. As the new school year approaches, try to imagine how AI can make a difference for students of all ages.

Dr. Smith’s career in scientific and information research spans the areas of bioinformatics, artificial intelligence, toxicology, and chemistry. He has published a number of peer-reviewed scientific papers. He has worked over the past seventeen years developing advanced analytics, machine learning, and knowledge management tools to enable research and support high-level decision making. Tim completed his Ph.D. in Toxicology at Cornell University and a Bachelor of Science in chemistry from the University of Washington.

You can buy his book on Amazon in paperback and in kindle format here.