How AI will help teachers in the future?

Teachers are the most important part of a student’s life. They foster enthusiasm, nurture creativity, and boost social development in young learners. 

Unfortunately, teachers are overburdened with oversized classrooms and administrative tasks like managing attendance, scheduling classes, and conducting exams. Technology can lend a helping hand so teachers can focus their energies on the more important task of educating students.

In the future, teachers will join hands with artificial intelligence (AI) to create the perfect learning environment for young learners. But how? What is AI? And how does it fit in the current online learning ecosystem?

Helping teachers understand students better

This is the age of information and there are vast amounts of data available, including student learnings. No human can possibly process such humongous data. AI or more precisely Machine Learning (ML) can identify patterns and make predictions by analysing vast amounts of data. 

AI can scan millions of answer sheets and propose learning gaps to be addressed for students in a class. As a result, teachers can utilise their time well and direct their efforts in helping students who are falling behind - enabling personalised learning, just like what Toppr does.

Optimising daily schedules

Another area where AI can add significant value is by helping teachers with their daily schedules. If some topics are rushed or slowed down, students’ learning can be affected. AI can suggest optimised sequencing of lessons - ensuring students learn better. 

Similarly, AI can provide revision alerts to teachers. In this way, educators can conduct remedial classes on time to help students who are falling behind. AI suggested revision schedules will also ensure better retention of concepts.

Regular assessments

Quick assessments and feedback are crucial for students. However, due to large classroom size and poor student-teacher ratio, teachers can’t conduct regular assessments every week. AI can take up this role and analyse all the objective questions that are direct in nature to find learning gaps.

Additionally, teachers can enable AI to focus on improving students’ conceptual understanding and analytical thinking. AI can accordingly create a personalised set of questions based on each students' skill level and assess more effectively. 

This will not only save time but also help teachers in channeling their focus on students who are lagging behind in studies.

Grading exam papers

Teachers often feel that setting and grading exam papers is the most time consuming activity. Reason being that the questions in exams are collated across a spectrum of difficulty levels from simple to complex. 

To streamline the grading process, teachers can split the exams into two sections. The first part will comprise simpler, objective questions of either MCQs, fill-in-the-blanks or match- the- columns. This section carries 50 percent to 60 percent weightage in the exams and can be easily assessed by AI.

The second part will contain tougher subjective questions. Teachers can direct their attention on evaluating such types of questions, thus reducing the grading load on them and also ensuring a quicker turnaround time.

For reference, if a teacher manages one division of 30 students and takes 10 minutes to grade one answer sheet, it will take them five hours to assess one single division. Generally, on an average, teachers manage three to five divisions at a single time. With AI grading half of the paper, the final assessment time can be reduced by at least 50 percent. It can further help educators in creating the right question paper that is neither too tough nor too easy.

These are just some of the many ways AI will help teachers in the future. It will be a formidable tool in a teacher’s toolkit. With new concepts such as hybrid classrooms, synchronous classrooms, asynchronous classrooms, and more in talks among educators, AI will surely play a significant role in mapping out the future of the education ecosystem.