GUEST COLUMN
Onkar Singh
With the rapid advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI) across various domains, including education, a debate has emerged regarding the potential for AI to supplant traditional educational institutions. Undoubtedly, AI tools, with their ability to learn, unlearn and relearn from vast datasets of information, can be trained to perform tasks typically carried out by humans. This also encompasses the training AI tool to replicate the instructional methods of teachers. As AI continues to demonstrate the capacity to deliver education in a manner akin to human educators, it is fostering a perception that classroom-based, human-led teaching may become redundant shortly. The machine’s imitation of human cognitive functions of teaching in classrooms is germinating a looming shift in the outlook.
An introspection of human beings as teachers at all levels of education demonstrates their varying abilities and cognitive skills. Thus, educational institutions have varying teaching-learning environments depending upon the involvement and capabilities therein. These variations yield differential educational standards amongst the educational institutions. It obligates continuous efforts to accomplish the overall improvement in the teaching-learning activities in educational institutions. To ameliorate the overall teaching-learning, attempts are made to enrich the quality of teachers through their pedagogical and domain-specific training.
It is worth noting that the challenges of teacher competency gaps have differing implications at primary, secondary and higher education levels because of the varying degrees of curiosity and learning abilities of students in respective levels as per their age. Going by age and the maturity levels of the students, it is obvious that the students enrolled in higher education have a greater understanding of their purpose of pursuing respective courses. Also, depending upon the worthiness of classroom interactions, these students are selective to opt for learning in classrooms or self-learning through ubiquitous digital content.
Thus, while one goes for learning in classrooms, the delivery by the teacher(s) decides whether the presence of students is out of their interest to learn or it’s due to certain regulations like compulsory attendance requirement. At the same time in the current scenario, even in the case of the digital learning platforms running prerecorded teaching content or content shared through the internet, there is a predominance of human beings as teachers in virtual mode with no limitation of number of users i.e. attendees and physical locations. Whereas in the case of physical classroom settings i.e. campus teaching or offline teaching, there is always the limitation of numbers for seating in the classroom, but the same is not there in the online education model with numerous other merits and demerits.
However in this online education model too there is engagement of human beings for delivering content, recording, live transmission, broadcasting, webcasting, etc. But, the well-trained AI-enabled chatbots are devoid of humans but able to generate humanlike conversations in natural language speech or in textual form. As of now, there are ample shreds of evidence of technological advances rolling out robots with artificial intelligence to speak and interact just like humans to the specific context of its training to perform the desired tasks. Further developments are leading to AI and machine learning making it feasible to create robots for successfully simulating human-like emotions as well and thus replace humans. This mechanisation of human activities including interactive ones like teaching in classrooms earlier considered indispensable due to emotional connection, empathy, care, etc. between teacher and students is standing on the edge of transformation and the possibilities of robots teaching in future classrooms cannot be ruled out.
Delving deep into the impending change in the education system concerning the teaching-learning-evaluation shows that there are two schools of thought- one for it and the other against it. Those advocating for the replacement of human teachers by robots rely majorly upon the good quality of teaching-learning interactions due to the machine’s capabilities of getting trained for best content delivery and evaluation while the teachers have varying capabilities due to diversity in human competencies and abilities. The other factors include, firstly, the non-uniformity of the classroom interactions between teachers and students across the educational institutions being levelled up to a uniform level due to the robots performing these tasks. Secondly, the volume of content delivery, durations and repeatability with minimal cost also do not get restrained when the teaching is carried out by machines. Thirdly, the upcoming AI-powered robots are also likely to have the ability to undertake teaching in multiple languages as per the need of the pupil and also understand the individual levels for offering the specialized teaching requirements to them in particular. Fourthly, the worldwide emphasis on imparting AI education will roll out competencies that can create AI robots that may attempt to replace humans.
Now, when AI is becoming ubiquitous in almost all domains and showcasing its potential to even do the lecturing like human teachers, is looming a threat to educators. It’s high time to make the assessment that the human teachers have to perform their job of educating students in a much more holistic manner with increased rigour and quality along with sensitivity to the requirements of the students. Failure to understand the students’ aspirations and not offering education up to the expectation levels in classrooms is likely to make teachers irrelevant in the IT age that is offering numerous avenues to seek knowledge. Though it will not be a very happy situation, everyone’s desire to get the best quality learning at a wider scale and the same being restricted due to the quality of teachers will usher in an era of teaching-learning-evaluation processes carried out AI-powered robots in a well-curated environment and not by human teachers.
Looking at the economics, apparently, AI-powered teaching will entail huge initial investments for training the robots in the beginning as per the curriculum and not many operational and other expenditures at a later stage. Also, it may obliviate the requirements of the educational institutions of the present time as the IT network can enable centralised online teaching to every individual student. The growing number of online educational programmes and their acceptance by stakeholders in higher education in particular is an indication of the upcoming changes in learning environments. The academics and regulators must ponder upon the reasons for the shift to online learning and virtualisation of education and strive hard to ensure that human teachers deliver effectively with excellent quality, empathy, passion, commitment and integrity that distinguish them from any generative AI based robot. Else, the compelling circumstances will let the technology drive the education system autonomously.
(The author is vice chancellor of Veer Madho Singh Bhandari Uttarakhand Technical University; views expressed are personal)
