The Broader Professional Context

Examining a Trend and its possible implications for Teaching Practice

Identify

The trend that I have identified that is relevant to my practice is the use of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.).

A.I. has been around in Science Fiction for a very long period of time and was original suggested by the British Computer Scientist Alan Turing in 1949 who stated: “I do not see why it (the machine) should not enter any one of the fields normally covered by the human intellect, and eventually compete on equal terms.”

The reason this trend is interesting to me is that A.I. is becoming more talked about and pervasive in the world at large as well as creeping into the classroom. It is relevant to my practice in that A.I. can enhance student engagement and learning in ways that a human teacher cannot. This does have some scary implications as well, could machines replace teachers?

Analyse

The US National Intelligence Council (2017) suggests in it's Report "Global Trends: The paradox of progress" (page 16), that unregulated A.I. could be disruptive and dangerous to humans individually and states/countries on a larger scale. Additionally it could have drastic affects on industry and therefore jobs and income.

Paradoxically it may be able, when used effectively, to enhance the learning of students and provide better outcomes. 

There are a number of possible ways in which A.I. could be used to enhance teaching and learning, including but not limited to:

• Intelligent tutoring systems
• Conversational agents
• Automatic engagement detection
• Find patterns in learning
• Realtime feedback / Gamification

(Simon Knight, 2018) and (Ten Trends, 2018)

The use of A.I. in educational has the potential to provide great benefits, but it must be tempered with a controlled approach that considers the possible impacts.

Developments currently being untaken could lead to A.I. systems that will inform Teachers/Administrators about the effectiveness of a curriculum and whether or not it is enabling all the students in it. (Ten Trends, 2018).

These kinds of developments could assist teachers with better developing the curriculum and with making it more adaptive to changing student needs. 

Evaluate

What does this mean for the future of teaching and learning?

For one thing technology needs to continue to be embraced in Education to allow the advantages that can come from A.I. to be available. 

Research into this is going on worldwide, more so in highly industrialised 1st world countries.

In my particular area the introduction of this type of technological advancement is a bit more straight forward, given that Digital Technology is an area of fairly constant development and change. The NZ Ministry of Education has recently updated the Curriculum to included new Digital Technology Strands. 

There are already examples of simplified forms of A.I. type solutions in place to aid or enhance student learning experiences.

One such example that is already in use in New Zealand, it was developed here coincidently, and now spreading outside this country is Code Avengers. (https://www.codeavengers.com).

This is a gamified learning platform that has been set up to assist students with learning a range of coding systems, including HTML, CSS, Java and Python to name a few.

References

Simon Knight Lecturer in Learning Analytics, & Simon Buckingham Shum Professor of Learning Infomatics. (2018, March 09). Artificial intelligence holds great potential for both students and teachers – but only if used wisely. Retrieved March 10, 2018, from http://theconversation.com/artificial-intelligence-holds-great-potential-for-both-students-and-teachers-but-only-if-used-wisely-81024

Ten Trends 2018. (n.d.). Retrieved March 10, 2018, from https://www.core-ed.org/research-and-innovation/ten-trends/2017/artificial-intelligence/

National Intelligence Council. (2017). Global trends: The Paradox of Progress. National Intelligence Council: US. Retrieved from https://www.dni.gov/files/images/globalTrends/documents/GT-Main-Report.pdf