School as we know it will soon become a memory. In the 2020s, education will be tailored entirely to students’ individual knowledge gaps — redefining teachers roles in the classroom, says Joel Hellermark, CEO and founder of Sana Labs.
The best chess player in the world does not outperform the best computer. But the best player, combined with technology, always trumps the best computer.
The same principle will apply to education during the 2020s.
The structure of traditional education, where we devote the first 20 years of our lives to learning and the rest of our careers to applying knowledge, will be broken up over the next decade.
Teaching is a profession which will only increase in status during the 2020s
The learning cycle becomes continuous. Rather than segmented learning, we expect to retrain every five or ten years. This is largely due to the fact that many tasks are automated: new knowledge central to one’s own field of work is created, alongside new industry regulation.
Coping with this rapid development is a key factor in personalizing education through artificial intelligence — since everyone enters the system with fundamentally different levels of knowledge. While only 3 percent of the world’s education is digitized today, the industry is expected to be worth $341 billion by 2025.
Currently, students learn approximately 70 percent of the curriculum each year, leading to the accumulation of knowledge gaps over time. Using educational materials with integrated AI systems, these knowledge gaps can be rapidly and accurately identified and addressed. As a result, research shows that those with the greatest knowledge gaps are most affected by personalized learning.
By identifying and addressing the knowledge gaps, the AI-based system ensures that 100% of knowledge is constantly mastered.
This sea change also means that school courses will be restructured in the future. Instead of being counted as fully trained at a certain point in time, it is what skills you have mastered that control your training level.
Crucially, personalized education also entails a change in the teaching profession, and how time is spent in the classroom. Significantly less time is spent on teaching basic factual knowledge, which the student themselves have already embedded, through a personalized tool.
The view that AI competes with the teacher is mistaken. Instead, their role will be transformed into one of mentoring, leading and structuring group work, provoking discussion and other elements requiring higher levels of knowledge.
The role of the teacher will be enhanced by the computational power of the computer, which has already taken over many time-consuming administrative tasks. This shift allows them to focus on the creative part of the professional role — which a computer cannot shoulder.
It is self-evident that, as a direct result of AI-driven personalization, teachers will increase in status and importance throughout the 2020s.
After all, just as in the example of the chess player, it is the combination of data and human which forms the most formidable solution.
Original article written by Sophia Sinclair, published 2019–09–27
