Artificial Intelligence + Education: Catalyzing the Transformation of Teachers' Identity and Role

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In the book "AI: The Nature and Future of Artificial Intelligence" by British scholar Margaret Boden, artificial intelligence is defined as "letting computers complete various things that the human mind can do." So far, the research field of "artificial intelligence" has experienced seven stages: budding, birth, gold, first trough, prosperity, second trough, and continued development. At present, products combining artificial intelligence with education are springing up like mushrooms and are rapidly covering all areas of the education ecosystem.

It is worth noting that at present, artificial intelligence is still in the "weak" artificial intelligence stage, the education data ecosystem has not yet been formed, and the sharing mechanism and artificial intelligence ethics have not yet been established. Therefore, there are bound to be many risks in the current “artificial intelligence education” products. As far as the field of education is concerned, the development of artificial intelligence lies in promoting the in-depth application of artificial intelligence in teachers' "teaching" and students' "learning", solving outstanding problems in education and teaching, empowering teachers, reducing the burden on students, and returning to moral integrity. Cultivate people's original aspirations and promote the all-round development of students' moral, intellectual, physical, artistic and physical skills.

The first choice for the new generation of "artificial intelligence education" research and development direction

Developing an artificial intelligence expert platform for teachers

Currently, the exploration of adding artificial intelligence technology to educational scenarios is in full swing. In November 2018, the "Artificial Intelligence Education Blue Book" released by Beijing Normal University stated that "artificial intelligence education" mainly focuses on five areas: intelligent education environment, intelligent learning process support, intelligent education evaluation, intelligent teacher assistants, and intelligent education management and services. A typical scene. In the "Global Artificial Intelligence Development White Paper (2019)" released by Deloitte Research, the application of artificial intelligence in education is summarized into five teaching links: teaching, learning, evaluation, testing, and practice.

Currently, most artificial intelligence education products are mainly used by students and parents, including learning machines, early education robots, and question-searching products. The market behavior itself is beyond reproach, but so far, existing artificial intelligence education products have not yet solved the problems of accuracy and zero error, and potential educational risks have not been paid attention to.

In fact, as far as current education is concerned, the most urgent product to be developed and provided should be an expert system or platform for teachers with data mining and intelligent assistance functions.

First of all, this is the need for teachers to accurately diagnose academic conditions. In the past, when discussing the issue of teacher professionalization, scholars generally compared the teaching profession with the medical profession. 100 years ago, there was almost no big difference in the complexity of the tools used by doctors and teachers. Doctors used earpieces, and teachers used chalk and blackboards. However, the degree of intelligence of these two professional auxiliary tools today is very different. Doctors have ECG, EEG, and MRI. Resonance, neurosurgery robots, expert reading systems, remote diagnosis and treatment systems based on big data and artificial intelligence, etc. However, the only auxiliary tools for teachers to teach are electronic whiteboards, and there is a lack of corresponding intelligent tools for academic diagnosis. Education and teaching are art, but they should first be scientific. If education and teaching lack scientific and technological support, teachers will be confused and trapped. At the same time, the scientific and technological community has not prioritized the development of products that support teacher education and teaching and have diagnostic functions. Therefore, it is urgent to integrate next-generation communications, Internet of Things, big data mining, artificial intelligence deep learning and other technologies to develop expert systems or platforms with educational diagnosis and solution suggestions for teachers.

Secondly, this is the need to achieve substantial burden reduction. German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus and others have found that in order for learners to master the knowledge they have learned, they need to practice and consolidate it repeatedly. Over-learning is necessary, but exceeding a certain limit will lead to learning fatigue. Diminishing marginal effects. The prevalence of question-based tactics in the traditional teaching model cannot simply be attributed to teachers being "lazy" or "one-sidedly pursuing the admission rate," but rather because most teachers cannot grasp students' academic conditions like doctors can accurately diagnose illnesses. As class sizes expand, teachers have less and less control over students’ academic conditions. Therefore, to truly reduce the burden on students, the key is to provide teachers with necessary support, help them diagnose and evaluate students' learning status, and provide educational programs that can be selected and transformed. This is precisely the strength of artificial intelligence. At the same time, artificial intelligence can also liberate teachers from complicated simple labor such as attendance, registering scores, statistical scores, data collection, etc.

Breakthrough point in the construction of artificial intelligence expert platform

Cross-disciplinary integration, establishment of data ecology, and promotion of blockchain applications

can be rewritten like this: The development ideas and product functions of the artificial intelligence education products that have been launched are very similar. Taking the learning machine as an example, the developers cooperated with thousands of primary and secondary schools in the early stage to obtain a large number of exercises related to the knowledge points and ability points of the textbooks, and designed a system or platform for academic diagnosis and correction based on behaviorism theory. This type of platform usually has big data functions and can generate a student's personal image by analyzing the student's homework, number of exercises, etc. In fact, providing these functions to teachers can reduce the burden on teachers to a certain extent and help teachers implement personalized education and teaching. This can be called "artificial intelligence education" 1.0. However, the artificial intelligence expert platform for teachers should move forward in terms of intelligence and make breakthroughs in cross-disciplinary integration, educational data ecological construction and blockchain technology application.

The first is the "artificial intelligence education" 2.0 environmental architecture that interdisciplinary, cross-border integration, and realize division of labor and cooperation. "Artificial Intelligence Education" 2.0 technical environment architecture requires the cross-integration of software engineering, information science and technology, control and automation, neuropedagogy, neuropsychology, educational technology and other disciplines. Among them, the education discipline focuses on relying on the latest research results in neuroscience and psychological science, especially the latest results in the fields of brain science and brain-inspired research, to provide support for computational science to understand the human brain and bionic technology; computing science, information science, etc. focus on educational big data Acquisition, knowledge graph construction, data processing and mining, intelligent diagnosis, and research; software engineering is responsible for intelligent platform engineering development, etc.

The second is to build an educational data ecosystem. Data, computing power, algorithms, and learning science are the four major elements of “artificial intelligence education”. Massive educational data is not only the basis for training artificial intelligence systems, but also the key to developing educational artificial intelligence. The formation of massive educational data ecological data depends on many aspects such as acquisition and sharing, data preprocessing, data storage and calculation. In terms of obtaining educational data, the focus should be on the student learning process. Data including classroom learning, problem solving, answering questions, work creation, etc. can be obtained through equipment and means such as eye trackers and electronic ink books that can play back writing traces. Characteristics such as cognition, memory, representation, thinking, attention, and personality. In terms of educational data sharing, the establishment of education data collection standards and specifications should be accelerated, and public education data resources should be opened and shared according to agreements while complying with data rules and privacy ethics. In terms of educational data storage and computing, in addition to the development and application of artificial intelligence technologies such as algorithm optimization, deep learning, and material training, universities and scientific research institutes should also jointly tackle key problems to quickly form big data models and comparisons with my country's independent intellectual property rights. To the norm.

The third is to promote the application of blockchain technology in the artificial intelligence expert platform for teachers. Currently, the research hotspots of "blockchain education" at home and abroad mainly focus on credit certification, certificate management, digital education resources, learner capabilities and learning outcome management. The attributes of blockchain, such as centralization, consensus mechanism, traceability and high trust, can be used to solve difficult problems such as educational diagnosis, student development, especially moral development evaluation. The establishment of students' personal learning and growth files based on blockchain technology will help to completely change the way of education and teaching evaluation, and can also provide important support for the development of artificial intelligence expert platforms for teachers.

Artificial Intelligence Expert Platform for Teachers

Empower teachers and promote changes in teachers’ main tasks

The artificial intelligence environment with elements such as intelligent perception, deep learning, neural networks, and emotional computing has been deeply embedded in all walks of life and every aspect of life and learning in human society. With the rapid development of artificial intelligence in the field of education, many teachers are beginning to worry about whether they will lose their jobs

"Artificial Intelligence Education" empowers teachers, but it also calls for the transformation of teachers' work. At present, teachers' three main tasks of preaching, teaching, and solving doubts are changing. The massive online learning resources and artificial intelligence tutoring products of the MOOC platform can basically replace traditional teachers' knowledge teaching; the artificial intelligence expert platform for teachers can also assist teachers to answer students' questions and solve doubts to a certain extent.

The "China New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Report 2020" compiled by the China Academy of Science and Technology Development Strategies, the New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Research Center of the Ministry of Science and Technology, and more than ten domestic and foreign institutions believes that the role and definition of teachers in the artificial intelligence era have changed Changes, but technology will not replace human teachers. The emergence of a new generation of artificial intelligence expert platforms can not only help teachers complete mechanical repetitive tasks, but also provide teachers with "portraits" of academic status and personalized solutions to help students.

As early as 1994, Zhu Xiaoman pointed out in "Creating Emotional Normal Education" that "people's ideological and moral character, emotional quality and behavioral habits are not accomplished by relying on the cognitive teaching process, but are often accomplished by students spontaneously to teachers. Imitation, recognition, accepting the influence of teachers unconsciously, and establishing behavioral constraints are the so-called subtle influences." Therefore, "preaching", an important educational task involving emotions, is currently difficult to completely replace with artificial intelligence. When teachers conduct face-to-face education with students, the teacher’s concerned eyes and encouraging gestures, the trust and support formed between teachers and students, and students’ admiration and imitation of teachers, etc., cannot be replaced by any cold artificial intelligence products. . The effectiveness of online learning during the epidemic also proves the importance and irreplaceability of face-to-face education.

The essence of education is that one tree shakes another tree, one cloud pushes another cloud, and one soul awakens another soul. The risks of artificial intelligence itself and the particularity of its application in education determine that priority should be given to the development of expert systems or platforms for teachers to assist and support their work. Teachers should pay more attention to the accumulation of their own educational experience and wisdom, use artificial intelligence expert platforms to carry out evidence-based teaching, make the teaching and education process more scientific and effective, and make students' homework and exercises easier and more accurate. With the help of big data and educational suggestions provided by artificial intelligence, teachers can be liberated from complicated and trivial repetitive work and chasing scores, more fully assume the role of emotional "education", and better adhere to the original intention of cultivating people with moral integrity. .

(Author: Ding Jinhong is the dean of the School of Teacher Education of Nantong University, concurrently the director of the Teacher Education Management Office, and a professor)

Source丨China Education News

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