Artificial Intelligence & Adaptive Learning
Artificial Intelligence Education, or what is more commonly known as Adaptive learning, is a modern trend in learning environments that are rapidly growing with more and more teachers and educational institutes bringing it into practice in their regular classroom interactions. Simply defined, the Adaptive learning or education is an online and computer-based trend in teaching that uses the power of technology and advancement to design the teaching material in response to the learners’ level of output and efficiency.
This kind of teaching is also a part of the student-focused framework aimed at designing such teaching methodologies that are individualized and customized to better suit the preferences and competence level of individual learners. Given below are the three most relevant aspects of Adaptive learning that summarize the entire concept behind this specific trend of teaching:
- Adaptive learning uses computer algorithms and other advanced A.I tools to perceive the learners’ competence.
- The data obtained as a result of students’ response is thus used to develop further teaching contents in a manner to suit the students’ needs and understanding level.
- Adaptive mode of learning and teaching ensures that every student only gets what he or she requires at a given level and what would possibly be best understood by him or her.
The start of the year 2020 has led many educational institutes to foster their teaching methodologies in a better way by incorporating the Adaptive Educational concepts for the betterment of the learners they are enrolling. Educationists all over the world are predicting a prosperous and richly helpful future for this trend in education particularly because of the fine-grained analysis it carries out of the individual learner’s understanding and its ability to design further teaching material based on it.
The Initiation and Recent Growth Of Adaptive Trend In Educational Settings
Albeit all the fame and progress that it started to experience just recently, the adaptive trend of teaching and learning has its root deep down in the behaviourist and cognitive psychological researches dating back to the second half of 20th century. The works of B.F. Skinner in behaviourism and the upheaval of Artificial intelligence movement somewhere in the closing decades of the previous century have a huge role the development of Adaptive educational trends and in making them what they are today.
Another important aspect that must not be ignored in the list of factors that helped in the upheaval of adaptive education is the continuous growth of technology and its ease of availability that made it a part of our every-day lives. All these factors have brought adaptive education to where it is today and this growth is no likely to stop anywhere in the near future as well.
From its use by NASA experts to its use in U.S. military training and now its incorporation to the average and regular classrooms, Adaptive learning has come a long way since its birth as a proper model of education but still has a long way to go in the upcoming years of 21st century as per a recent research conducted on its future by AdaMetiri Group.
The Generic Metrics of Adaptive Education
Regardless of the level on which an instructor has adapted this model of education, there are a few characteristics of adaptive learning that must be fulfilled in order for any kind of adaptive setting to bear fruitful results. These characteristics are summarized as follows:
- Even with the same teaching contents, the teacher must change the sequence of the learning items in a way that suits the learning efficiency of each student individually. Thus, all the learners will end up learning the same thing but in the preferred way that suits them the most.
- Adaptive modes of teaching allow the students to work with the course contents and attempt to understand them with a pace that suits them. This trend of teaching acknowledges the fact that not all the learners have the same mental capabilities and thus no two learners can process and acquire any curriculum content at the same pace, utilizing the same amount of time, and in an equally similar manner.
- The learners in the adaptive classrooms are never plainly told about what they should do next whenever they are stuck at a point. Rather, the aim of a teacher in adaptive education is to allow the learners with enough time for them to come up with their own solutions to the problems they encounter, so that they can understand and acquire the contents better and remember them for longer.
These and a few other characteristics of this educational trend are what promise more independent and competent learners with better skills to over-power and over-come any difficulty they may face. Adaptive education trend and its utility promise a better future for the learners by allowing them to learn on their own pace and polishing their analytical skills in a better way.
References:
https://www.3plearning.com/blog/4-education-trends-coming-next-year/
https://www.dreambox.com/adaptive-learning
https://www.smartsparrow.com/what-is-adaptive-learning/
https://www.mheducation.com/ideas/what-is-adaptive-learning.html
https://library.educause.edu/resources/2017/1/7-things-you-should-know-about-adaptive-learning
