Educators in the future will face many challenges. Economics, politics, changing job markets, globalization, and shifting values all impact the educational system. Teachers, administrators, educational content creators, and others must rise to the occasion to meet these challenges.
Many strategies will be employed to ensure that this happens. However, there is one thing that will play a constant role in helping educators solve the problems they face. That is technology.
AI will allow educators to satisfy students’ learning needs in a timely manner
Today, the educational system doesn’t work perfectly because educators can’t accurately predict the students’ learning needs. There are many teachers out there who genuinely want to help students but don’t know how to do it right. They simply lack feedback that would allow them to understand which of their students is currently experiencing issues working on a school assignment.
Fortunately, the development of artificial intelligence can change the situation for the better:
AI can recognize when students are struggling with concepts during a lecture or in-class assessment and communicate that to the teacher. In the future, teachers will use AI to collect relevant feedback and help students in a timely manner.
MATHIA and other technologies can help identify teaching and learning gaps. It means teachers can figure out what specific issues each student faces and provide personalized support.
What about data collection and machine learning algorithms, they can be used to alter educational content as children learn to personalize their experience.
The good news is that educators have already understood the importance of AI. The IDC report shows that 99.4% of educators see AI as an instrumental to their institution’s competitiveness within the next three years, and 92% say that they have already started to experiment with the technology.
AR and VR will play the roles of economic and geographic equalizers
Despite the efforts of educators, local authorities, and global organizations, educational equality hasn’t been achieved yet. Some students still have more educational opportunities than others:
Students in well-funded districts are at an advantage – they can afford field trips and other enrichment activities.
Students attending schools near city centers are also at an advantage – schools that are located near city centers attract better-qualified teachers and have close proximity to resources.
Students living in rural areas or low-income areas are at a disadvantage. There is a constant lack of staffing resources in rural schools. Also, there are issues related to geographic isolation.
How AR and VR can help to build educational equity? Both AR and VR play an important role in bringing enriching experiences into the classroom:
Virtual tours and field trips are a great alternative to real-life trips for students from rural areas.
AR can be used for various science experiments to immerse students in the learning process.
AR also helps to boost peer-to-peer learning. Educational projects like Kiwi’s project encourage collaborative learning via schools’ wireless networks.
Technology will be used to support assessment in the classroom
Currently, educators rely largely on summative assessments (standardized testing) like midterm exams, final projects, and term papers. These are delivered at the end of the lesson or at the end of a term in order to compare the results of one student against some standard or benchmark.
The summative assessments help educators to understand whether students have gained specific knowledge or not. But these don’t help to enhance the learning process during the term.
Formative assessment, vice versa, allows teachers to measure progress and mastery as children learn. For instance, ASU’s FACT project (Formative Assessment With Computational Technologies) uses real-time analytics to help teachers monitor student learning.
Formative assessment benefits both: instructors and students. By collecting ongoing feedback, instructors can recognize where students are struggling and address problems immediately by adjusting their teaching styles. What about students, they can identify their strengths and weaknesses and target areas that need work.
Here is an example. Let’s say student John writes captivating essays, but makes too many grammar mistakes. If a teacher provides John with adequate ongoing feedback and directs him to one of the websites for elementary students, John will know what steps he should take to improve his grammar skills. He will work on his mistakes and, as a result, significantly improve his skills until the end of the term.
Cross-border collaboration between students
The world is going global, and collaboration between students should also go global. Educators should eliminate all existing borders and encourage peer-to-peer learning.
Do you wonder why cross-border collaboration between students is so important? It adds value to the learners. Collaborative learning benefits students in multiple ways:
Nation-specific differences trigger curiosity and motivation. Students from one school are eager to present their state or country to students who live in another state or country.
Cross-border collaboration facilitates goal fulfillment in communication skills.
It also helps to boost digital skills in students. Communicating with peers who live overseas, students learn how to use video conferencing tools and other software.
Experts predict that emerging technologies will influence this process a lot. Educational social media platforms will continue to enable collaborative learning in the future. This collaboration will stop being limited to school or district boundaries. Instead, students will engage with learners worldwide.
The upcoming changes will influence the academic writing industry. Since students will be more open communicating and sharing their experiences with each other, scam and unreliable companies will have no chances to survive. Only those writing companies that provide adequate academic help will thrive.
Conclusion
Technology is no magic bullet. It will not act alone to save or revolutionize education. That must also include funding, progressive policy changes, and cooperation between educators, students, parents, and communities.
However, technology will be the key to changes in the educational system. So if you want to know how the learning process will look like in the future, keep watching tech trends closely.
About the author: Daniela McVicker is a freelance writer and educational blogger at the Essay Guard, a website where she shares tips for students. Her aim is to make learning fun and help educators use technology for improving academic processes.
