Artificial Intelligence & Tutoring

AI is accelerating at a rapid pace in the education industry as companies that specialize in tutoring and even traditional textbook publishers get on board.

Dubbed adaptive learning, it’s designed to give students a personalized experience. AI is great at developing algorithms based on patterns it recognizes across sets of data. AI is useful in education because it can identify the gaps in a student’s understanding.

Because each student is different, AI allows a customized course of instruction that will get each student to mastery or understanding in the most efficient matter.

Chinese company Squirrel AI Learning, a leader in the AI education technology field, was founded in 2014. Currently, it has 1,700 schools, 3,000 staff members, a presence in 200 cities and an estimated valuation of $1 billion dollars. 

Squirrel AI Learning has partnered here in the US with Carnegie Mellon to help grow its US initiative further.

Derek Haoyang Li, founder and CEO of Squirrel AI Learning recently told MIT Technology Review, “When AI education prevails, human teachers will be like a pilot. Human teachers will focus on emotional communication.”

Traditional textbook companies who have long been associated with developing trends in education have already established footholds in the AI arena.

McGraw Hill has developed its own adaptive learning system called ALEKS. And, educational publishing powerhouse Pearson has just left its partnership with Knewton to develop its own proprietary program. 

 Alta, acts as a “virtual tutor” for hosts of college courses. While adaptive learning can be helpful for moving students through a course of study, opponents argue it can’t replace human teachers. AI has the ability to help a student master a course of study, but it can’t teach students how to learn. It also can’t help students determine what they’d like to learn more about, or how to cooperatively interact and solve problems with other students.

AI is proving to be a great tool in education and will most likely become more prevalent as the technology becomes more refined and readily available.

Students To Fight Bullying With Technology

A leading education technology company  announced on Wednesday, it would give schools a free and confidential way for students to tell school officials via text that they are being bullied or are witnessing bullying. Blackboard’s TipTxt program could change the school climate — or reveal just how pervasive student-on-student harassment has become.

Blackboard, will offer the service for free starting immediately. Texts sent through the confidential program will be routed to school officials, who then will determine how to investigate. The company has tested the system in a several schools. Official declined to predict how many schools would embrace the system or how much it would cost the company. But given the company’s reach — 31,000 school districts already use Blackboard products to allow administrators to keep track of student records — it could be an easy sell.

The Education Department’s National Center for Education Statistics reported 29 percent of students ages 12 to 18 reported being bullied at school or online. The department’s statistical arm included in its definition of bullying name calling, rumors, physical harm or exclusion from activities.

Blackboard says students will be able to text a number posted in school hallways or in handbooks with details of an incident. Example- a student could text that he is seeing someone knock books from another student’s hands in the hallway or that someone is walking down the hall crying.

The system would send an automated reply to the student texter that someone is looking into it and then alert a designated school official who monitors the text feeds.If the school official needs more information, he or she can text back to the student.

Potential For Abuse-School and company officials alike said they would have to weigh what is credible and what is bogus on a case-by-case basis. They do not want bully-reporting systems to become a tool to bully students.