Grading AI Agent grading papers, monitoring student performance, learning interests, and suggestions to teachers.
According to Sal Khan, CEO of Khan Academy, a learning environment in which AI functions as a powerful aide to teachers rather than as an alternative, it is what the classroom will look like in the future.
“Imagine your child's school district has just discovered $1 billion and they decided to hire some great graduate students to hang out in the classroom,” Khan said in an interview with the BBC. “And in every classroom, four or five of these graduate students are acquired. These graduate students are invited to classroom teachers. They help grade the papers, bounce back ideas, and come up with a truly creative lesson plan.”
The United States is struggling with a lack of education, and instructors have made classrooms a massive crowd over the past few years. A combination of conditions, including heavy workloads and minimal wages, drives away many veteran teachers while also excluding new blood and joins the profession.
For those who choose to work in the classroom, Khan said that AI assistants will help reduce tension while improving student engagement.
AI teaching assistants said they can monitor classrooms along with real teachers. They can help the child if necessary and “report to the teacher.” For example, he added that AI can determine students' personal interests and suggest adjustments related to lesson plans to increase the likelihood that students will be involved in the material.
“Hey, I realized that Catty wasn't as engaged as yesterday,” Khan said. “Or, 'Look, Monkey is really engaged today. Would you like to praise what he did last night?” Or did you know that he's really become baseball?
“And they can distill all of it and communicate with their parents, so it's almost real-time, not once,” he added.
AI agents can create a game plan for tomorrow with their teacher at the end of their class.
“I think it's everyone's dreams. Students will love it, teachers will love it, parents will love it. And that's essentially what happens with AI,” Khan said.
AI has become an increasing presence in both student and teacher lives, and its role in the classroom is widely debated.
Advocates of classroom use, including some educators and business leaders such as Bill Gates, say it helps ease understaffed schools and “strengthen” education. Critics of AI in the classroom point to concerns about academic injustice and skill atrophy. A scenario like Khan explains. Agents learn more about the personality and skills of students, opening up privacy and security concerns.
Parents may have a “just fear” that their children can outsource their learning to AI, but Khan said he doesn't believe that even if technology rapidly develops into highly capable individuals in the classroom, it can be fully carried over to human educators. As AI continues to advance, social skills will become more important than ever before, he said.
“To be honest, it's the main reason why many parents, including myself, feel that they need to send their children to physical school along with other children, such as in social settings,” he said.
As “the person in the room,” teachers will take responsibility that AI can't do – he added, to hold students accountable and develop connections “to people.”
“We often focus on the criteria, what happens in school. Can children consider polynomials? Can they modify the sentence grammatically?” he said. “Though these skills are important, some of the key skills are: Can you deal with conflict? Can you be accountable? Can you communicate? Do you know how to navigate social pressure?”
