The International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education is published in conjunction with the International Artificial Intelligence in Education Society (IAIED). They refer to themselves as ‘A multidisciplinary group at the cutting edge of computer science, education, and psychology’.
They have such a broad scope in looking at AI in education, much more than what the UK government and UNESCO have used so far which look at AI within the scope of administration or as assistants or as support for curriculum development. Instead their ‘Coverage extends to agent-based learning environments, architectures for AIED systems, bayesian and statistical methods, cognitive tools for learning, computer-assisted language learning, distributed learning environments, educational robotics, human factors and interface design, intelligent agents on the internet, natural language interfaces for instructional systems, real-world applications of AIED systems, tools for administration and curriculum integration, and more’.
This is an entire spectrum which includes integration, robotics, collaboration, the architecture and language whilst including curriculum development support and administration as well. This is a much better overview and gives a better understanding of AI in education which gives scope for far more utilisation, innovation and collaboration, a definition which should be adopted by policy makers in order to allow for a better assessment and understanding of the full spectrum of AI in education.
Two articles within the journal were reviewed:
The first articled is ‘Enlarged Education – Exploring the Use of Generative AI to Support Lecturing in Higher Education by Darius Hennekeuser et al, (2024). They discuss how it is vital for tool creators to understand the needs of university lecturers and by default educators. The researchers built tools specific to the requirements of educators utilising an ‘LLM-based assistant with retrieval augmented generation (RAG) capabilities and lecturing materials as its data foundation’.
They found lecturers were more positive towards using the product and felt they would utilise AI more if they knew it was trustworthy and reliable.
This is indeed a good place to start and connects with the paper written to the House of Lords James Tobin, (2023), which recommends accreditation for ‘AI in Education’ tools. This would improve utilisation as educators can trust the source, a major principle in accepting communication. People accept communication when they trust the source obviously applies here.
The second article was by Anita Chaudhary, Innovative Educational Approaches: Charting a Path Ahead , ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN EDUCATION, (Page 57-61), (2023).
The paper discusses the impact of AI in Education but admits much of its impact is still largely unknown.
It discusses the global growth of the industry by referring to a survey by Research and Markets, which stated that ‘the global market for AI education reached $1.1 billion in 2019 and is expected to surpass $25.7 billion by 2030’. This rapid growth would be a factor in why UNESCO describes AI in Education as ‘The Ed Tech Tragedy’. A rapid growth of an industry does raise eyebrows but should not be feared or treated as a threat without a discussion of its capabilities and the possibilities inherent in it which is obviously driving growth.
They discuss the advantages of AI in education which is essentially the same as others in the field so far and they include more immersive learning, creative, specific to the individual, less time needed by teachers and the disadvantages which are bias, dependence on technology and inequality of access.
Their conclusion is that AI is here to stay, and creators must work to ensure they understand what educators require whilst educators must embrace AI in the knowledge that it cannot take their jobs but rather will help facilitate their teaching.
This is a valid position on AI in education and support must be provided to educators to understand and adopt AI in their classrooms.
Anita Chaudhary, Innovative Educational Approaches: Charting a Path Ahead , ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN EDUCATION, (Page 57-61), (2023) https://parabpublications.com/books/pdf/innovative-educational-approaches-charting-a-path-ahead.pdf#page=57
Darius Hennekeuser, Daryoush Daniel Vaziri, David Golchinfar, Dirk Schreiber & Gunnar Stevens, (2024), Enlarged Education – Exploring the Use of Generative AI to Support Lecturing in Higher Education
My course 'How to use AI in your Creative Practice' is available at www.famk.co.uk
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