Could AI in classrooms stop children falling behind at school?

Artificial Intelligence could be a game changer for education according to an Australian tech expert.

Some experts believe rather than being a threat to education, artificial intelligence could improve children's learning experience and educational outcomes. Source: Getty / Krongkaew

Key Points

• Although AI has been banned in some school, some believe it could help children learn.
• Teaching approaches could be developed to address different learning styles of individual students.
• Imagine a history lesson voiced by Barack Obama or a music lesson by Madonna, it could be a reality with AI.

It’s been called a ‘plague on education’ and is banned in some schools, but a growing number of tech experts are convinced artificial intelligence (AI) will revolutionise the way students learn.

Director of the WA Data Science Innovation Hub, Alex Jenkins, wants the education sector to look beyond concerns about plagiarism with tools such as ChatGPT and consider the potential for AI to help children learn.

“I believe that the opportunity is enormous,” he said.

No more teaching to the 'average'

Mr Jenkins has a vision for the future of education where all children are given the opportunity to reach their educational potential, but it means changing the way things are done.

Mr Jenkins said the current method of teaching puts a deadline on learning specific concepts and that teachers do not always have the time to teach individual students in different ways. Source: Getty / ER Productions Limited

“The classroom model dates back to the industrial revolution, and it has served us well for a long period of time, but there are limitations,” he said.

Teachers generally teach a curriculum to their class of between 20 and 30 students, working within a timeline determined by school terms.

Mr Jenkins said teachers had no choice but to teach to the average, which meant some students were left behind and the higher achievers did not have the chance to push themselves.

He used the teaching of maths as an example.

“Within a mathematical curriculum, you have a number of topics, so you have things like arithmetic, and then once you've mastered arithmetic, you move on to fractions.

“Some proportion of kids do not master arithmetic before they move on to fractions, and that makes it much harder for them to learn about what fractions are.”

A chart indicating students' journeys in maths learning.

Mr Jenkins said students often get overwhelmed by the difficulty of maths at some stage because they had not mastered the previous topic.

He suggests AI could use the mastery model of teaching, where a student did not move on to the next topic until they had mastered the previous one.

A chart indicating how AI support could potentially help improve maths learning outcomes.

“This model has shown to improve the educational outcomes of students but the reason we don't do it is up until now is we've never had the resources as a society," Mr Jenkins said.

“There's only one teacher but if you think of the AI as an as an educational assistant, and the teacher having 30 AI educational assistants that work with every student, then all of a sudden we can we can change the way that we teach students.”

Developed to address different learning styles

“The AI could work with each student in terms of their strengths and weaknesses. If they're neurodivergent in a particular way, if they lack language skills, or if they lack skills in a certain area, then the way that they are taught can be individualised by the AI," Mr Jenkins said.

AI could allow all students to be taught in a style that best suits them. Source: Getty / JohnnyGreig

“There might be three or four different ways to learn about a particular concept and you can approach that from different ways."

Mr Jenkins said the AI could use visualisations, sound, images or video to teach students through different learning styles.

Improving education outcomes in Australia

Mr Jenkins said the AI assistants would have a similar impact as tutors would.

"Everything we know about tutoring is that you can turn a below-average student into an above-average student, and you can turn an average student into a great student," he said.

Mr Jenkins is confident one-on-one support for all students using AI would boost the level of learning in schools.

"It'd generally put the average level of education up in multiple areas of numeracy and literacy by a significant amount."

A 2022 Productivity Commission report found that each year, between 5 and 9 per cent of Australian students did not meet year-level expectations in either literacy or numeracy.

The report went on to say 'tailored supports' were needed for these students.

"Research suggests that targeted interventions are effective, particularly small group or one-to-one tuition," it stated.

"Intensive, targeted support allows the teacher to focus on the needs of a small number of learners, providing teaching that is closely matched to pupil understanding."

Many Australian parents agree that a more individualised approach to learning would be beneficial.

A growing number of families are turning to homeschooling, with many of them feeling mainstream school in Australia did not cater to their children.

Teachers are not about to be replaced by AI

Australian Education Union (AEU) federal president Correna Haythorpe said it was crucial teachers were at the forefront of conversations about the impact of such technology in schools.

"A teacher is best positioned to determine the most effective approach to deliver learning programs for students with a variety of needs in the classroom. And often, it may involve use of additional educational resources to complement conventional teaching methods," she said.

Ms Haythorpe said issues around efficacy, student safety and what the potential use of AI in classrooms would look like needed to be considered and that the AEU was currently consulting its members on the matter.

Mr Jenkins said the integration of AI into classrooms would not make teachers redundant.

“I don't want people to think there's some kind of dystopia where we just have a classroom full of students in front of 50 laptops and they just work with it," he said.

“Teachers are absolutely indispensable," he said.

Mr Jenkins said he envisioned even with greater use of AI, there would always be a need for a teacher in a classroom. Source: Getty / Donald Iain Smith

"AI empowers the teachers to be able to spend more time focusing on classroom interaction, more time on encouraging and motivating students more time on social interactions and group activities with kids," he said.

"The technology won't replace teachers, it will bring teachers up to ensure that they are doing the best things that they can do to help their students."

Mr Jenkins said the online non-profit educational platform Khan Academy was currently leading the way in making the most of AI for education.

The online platform already makes use of chatbot technology, which uses software to simulate human-like conversations with students to help in their learning.

Embracing AI in Australian classrooms

Mr Jenkins said while AI technology could currently be used on computers in classrooms where it was age-appropriate, in the future, such technology may not need a traditional typing keyboard interface.

While hard to imagine now, he said the possibilities were almost endless.

“Imagine having a history lesson that was voiced by Obama or a music lesson by Madonna, I mean these are the things that are possible using this technology,” Mr Jenkins said.

He said while it was important to get the technology and approach right before deploying it en mass into classrooms, he could not see why Australian schools could not start integrating the use of AI into classes to explore how it could work.

“Let's deploy this and use it for half an hour a day, let's say half an hour of maths exercises using this model and then let's see how we go.”

Mr Jenkins said there was no reason why that sort of take-up of AI could not occur within the next year.

AI in education was discussed as part of a meeting between Federal education minister Jason Clare and his state counterparts in February.

The ministers agreed to establish a task force to develop a framework to guide schools in harnessing AI tools to support teaching and learning.