“If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow.” – John Dewey (Educational Philosopher)
Introduction
Today, Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIEd) stands out as an emerging field within educational technology (Ed Tech). Despite being in use for approximately three decades, educators still grapple with fully utilising the pedagogical potential of artificial intelligence (AI) on a broader scale and comprehending its significant impact on teaching and learning in school education. More recently, the National Education Policy (NEP) of 2020 emphasised the necessity of designing technology-based systems to achieve educational objectives effectively. Such disruptive technologies have the potential to enhance engagement and effectiveness of teaching and learning processes.
The AI Advantage
India’s Central Board of Secondary Education, in accordance with the National Education Policy, has introduced AI into school curricula. Recognising its importance in contemporary education, this strategic move aims to cultivate AI literacy among students, making them future ready.
AI in education offers significant advantages by facilitating personalised teaching and learning. By tailoring learning plans to individual student needs, AI creates immersive learning experiences and uses intelligent tracking to enhance learning efficiency and capabilities. It provides personalised guidance on challenging concepts, reducing learning time and improving overall outcomes. Intelligent adaptive learning technology mimics the one-on-one teaching process of human teachers, equipping learning systems with personalised teaching capabilities. Additionally, AI helps alleviate the workload of teachers, automating repetitive tasks such as grading assignments and exams. Intelligent tutor systems, automated assessment systems, educational robots and other AI tools can automate many of these repetitive tasks, thus easing teachers’ burdens and enabling them to focus more on student-centered care and meaningful interactions.
A balancing act between opportunities and obstacles
By freeing up time and energy, AI tools can significantly support school management in several areas, including detecting drop-out risks. In 2019, the Andhra Pradesh government partnered with Microsoft to predict potential school dropouts using machine learning and learning analytics. By analysing students’ personal attributes, school infrastructure, and teacher skills, the Azure ML-based system identified over 60 predictive patterns. The key factors influencing student dropout rates included insufficient furniture and lack of toilets. This information helped track at-risk students, enabling targeted counseling to reduce dropout rates.
AI tools also help in managing school administration and premises, enhancing surveillance of school facilities, implementing biometric attendance systems, and enabling remote student authentication and proctoring. Schools in Uttar Pradesh, Assam, and Tamil Nadu have implemented AI-driven facial recognition systems to register student attendance efficiently. Although these systems simplify attendance, concerns remain about data privacy as absence of clear guidelines for data collection, handling, and storage may risk breaching students’ privacy and security.
Furthermore, AI promotes educational equity by bridging the gap between regions with disparate access to educational resources. Disparities in education often arise due to economic or geographical constraints. AI interventions can mitigate these inequalities by transcending geographical barriers and delivering personalised remote learning experiences. It facilitates remote online learning in regions with teacher shortages, allowing a single educator to reach students across multiple areas. This enables access to great teachers and promotes resource-sharing among diverse educational settings.
Additionally, AI-driven homework grading systems streamline the assessment process, generating teaching data automatically and allowing teachers in remote areas to focus more on personalised instruction, adaptive learning, and skill development. By employing a combination of online and offline teaching methods, AI improves teaching standards in underserved regions and facilitates professional growth for remote educators.
While there are several benefits, policies regarding AI in education in India must address various critical aspects, including the collection and ownership of data in both private and public domains. A strong focus on empowering girls, women, and marginalised socio-economic groups is crucial, guided by the principles of inclusivity and fairness. Accountability poses another challenge; in many instances, there is a lack of transparency regarding the rationale behind the output generated by AI systems.
Despite significant growth in internet connectivity, India’s educational infrastructure remains inadequate for widespread AI integration. Mobile phones are the primary mode of internet access, while access to computers and tablets is limited. This digital divide is particularly pronounced in rural and tier-2/3 cities, where schools face a paucity of basic technological facilities and students often lack the necessary hardware for online learning. Furthermore, a shortage of skilled personnel hinders the effective implementation and maintenance of AI-powered educational systems.
AI: The Ethical Dilemma
There are two key concerns related to data privacy: surveillance and autonomy. AI-driven educational tools monitor the actions and preferences of both students and teachers, placing them under constant surveillance. This raises ethical concerns and may cause discomfort, as it infringes on privacy. It could also discourage students from expressing themselves freely, knowing their data is continuously being recorded.
AI-powered educational tools must be easy for teachers to understand, even for those without a strong technical background, and they must be reliable. According to Ethics of AI in Education: Towards a Community-Wide Framework, there is an additional requirement for AI in education systems; the systems should support human autonomy. This means users must have the ability to modify or deactivate the systems as needed.
Also, a significant concern regarding AI integration in school education is the potential for overreliance on technology to replace human interaction. While AI can automate tasks like grading and providing feedback, it may diminish opportunities for essential face-to-face interactions between students and teachers, as well as among peers. AI excels at memorising which is useful in language acquisition or historical fact memorisation but it struggles to cultivate essential skills like critical thinking, social values, collaboration, and creativity. To address this gap, innovative pedagogical approaches are needed to teach these skills in an AI-enabled environment. Companies like WizKlub and AugLi in India are making efforts to integrate critical thinking into AI-driven education.
In Conclusion
The introduction of any innovation is a double-edged sword, bringing both advantages and disadvantages. AI, particularly in the field of education, has the potential to bring tremendous benefits to humanity, especially for a country like India, which faces significant educational challenges. However, to fully harness the opportunities provided by AI in education, several challenges must be addressed including the absence of proper policies, governance, and accountability, ethical concerns related to data privacy and ownership, algorithmic fairness and bias, insufficient or improper infrastructure, and the rise of AI-based fakes and forgery.
Despite these hurdles, the potential benefits that AI in education offers for India are immense, especially in terms of promoting equality, equity, and inclusion in education, as well as enhancing learning outcomes. These benefits make it worthwhile tackling and overcoming these challenges.
Author’s Bio: Anushka Sharma is a research intern at the Bharti Institute of Public Policy, Indian School of Business. She holds a Master’s in Political Science from University of Lucknow and has previously interned with Navbharat Times and Metaphor Lucknow as a content writer and editor. Her areas of interest include education, artificial intelligence, sustainability, art and literature.