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Coming Soon: A Huge Test of Artificial Intelligence’s Role in Classrooms

Sean Cavanagh
Managing Editor

The feasibility and wisdom of bringing artificial intelligence into classrooms will soon be put to the test on a large scale—in Belgium.

Seven hundred schools that are part of the Flemish, government-run school system in the northern European nation have reached an agreement to implement an AI learning platform developed by Century Tech, a British company.

The artificial intelligence engine will be woven within a new learning platform called IXZO!, which will integrate the AI learning platform into a localized interface for Flemish students.

The arrangement will apply to all regionally funded schools in Flanders—a Dutch-speaking region in northern Belgium. More than 200,000 students will have access to the platform, according to a statement from Century Tech.

A representative of GO!, a  government organization that oversees education for the Flemish community, predicted that the partnership will bring breakthrough innovations to the region’s schools.

The government sees Century Tech as a “strong partner in AI, neuroscience, and data science,” said Raymonda Verdyck, the managing director of GO!, in a statement.

The school system’s effort is about “enabling every learner to follow education at their own pace and, at the same time, [reducing] our teachers’ administrative burden.”

A spokesman for Century Tech, Alex Blackburn, said the London-based company is already using forms of its AI technology in hundreds of schools around the world in Britain, the United States, and the Middle East.

But the project in Belgium is far more ambitious in its scale. Century Tech calls it the “first-ever state-level rollout of artificial intelligence in schools.”

The first schools in Belgium will begin using the program in September of this year, building to a wider deployment around 2024, Century Tech said.

Century Tech says its platform tracks all of students’ interactions with it for correlations and patterns in their behavior and performance. The goal is to build a customized academic path for the student.

The platform measures gaps in students’ knowledge, the pace of their learning, their habits and preferences–even, the company says, when information goes from their short-term to long-term memory. Students are constantly being assessed on a variety of questions, and natural-language processing provides corrective feedback. The resulting data is provided to both parents and teachers so they can intervene and help students make gains.

Beyond Adaptive Learning?

In a written explanation of Century Tech’s platform, company founder Priya Lakhani said the technology moves beyond “rules-based adaptive learning,”  in which developers explicitly tell students what paths are available to them, based on previous work.

“We can think of rules-based adaptivity like the standard clothes sizing: some parts of it will fit well, other areas not so much, and you probably have to compromise on fit in one area to get a good fit in another,” said Lakhani.

“It was good when it was all we had, but it’s not good enough anymore. AI can provide the equivalent of made-to-measure: genuine, full adaptivity and personalization for a student.”

Lakhani’s piece was co-written by Rose Luckin, a professor at University College London and the co-founder of EDUCATE, an ed-tech research body that is providing research support to Century Tech.

The use of artificial intelligence in schools is still in early stages. But the technology’s power has raised concerns on several fronts, including questions about data privacy and whether it could lead to artificial systems replacing or undermining traditional, teacher-led instruction.

Additionally, there’s a concern about some who study the economy and the labor force that schools aren’t doing enough to prepare students for a workforce that could be upended by AI and other forms of automation.

Century Tech predicts its AI platform will free up teachers’ time by automating administrative tasks such as grading and planning. The company argues that its technology will save teachers an average of six hours per week of time.

It will also give them tools and data necessary to intervene with students who are falling behind.

“It lets them get on with actually teaching,” Blackburn said in an e-mail.

The company’s data-privacy procedures, and its systems and storage are robust, he said. No personal information–only fully anonymous data–is ever exposed to the AI portion of the technology, Blackburn said.

In addition, the personal information is stored in a separate database used to produce dashboards and reports for schools. Access is restricted to the company, he said.

Independent of the rollout in Belgium, Century Tech is taking other steps to get the word out about its AI platform’s uses in schools.

This week it announced the launch of a “flagship schools” program designed to showcase how AI is being used in a group of British schools. The company says other schools can learn “how AI can be deployed in the classroom to improve outcomes and reduce teacher workload.”

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216 thoughts on “Coming Soon: A Huge Test of Artificial Intelligence’s Role in Classrooms”

  1. Very Good Initiative by Government of Belgium, In other Countries, technology is still not updated, but here it reaching new heights. I request the author to write more about this topic in the future, so that I will understand how it is helping students, and very eagerly waiting for the results

  2. Very Good Initiative by Government of Belgium, In other Countries, technology is still not updated, but here it reaching new heights. I request the author to write more about this topic in the future so that I will understand how it is helping students, and very eagerly waiting for the results

  3. There are many different benefits to AI, but there are drawbacks as well, such as a lack of human connection. For example, the human aspect of education is infinitely valuable and can’t be replicated by AI—and the compassion and emotion a teacher brings can make all the difference in a student’s education. While many technological advances have increased our quality of life, there is evidence that shows we have become more reliant on this technology. The same is said about AI. Educators could become more reliant on AI to craft curriculums and all other aspects of education and lose the most important part of educating: the human connection.

  4. I worry about the assumption that it is a good thing for teachers to not have to be responsible for grading and planning, to put those aspects of teaching into the “hands” of an algorithm, taking human judgment out of it. Planning especially goes hand in hand with teaching–as it occurs in response to what students do and need. AI can recognize when a student is wrong and right, but not when she can’t worry about being right because she’s sick or upset or when he just needs some time away from the computer for awhile. Teaching comes out of planning, and planning results from teaching. If the teacher doesn’t plan, how does he or she know what to teach? And grading, in itself problematical, could become even more invasive if everything a student does with AI ends up with some numerical “measurement.” All this prioritizes right/wrong answer recall, not deep learning. Grading seems to be replacing feedback when we know that what we want is to work the other way around.

  5. H. Hoffman, I agree. Grading and planning are both parts of teaching that require knowledge of the students, and the teacher should be the one doing both. I am glad they are keeping AI out of the actual classroom where it does not belong. However, I would rather see teaching receive the respect and pay that it deserves and countries hiring adequate teachers and giving them adequate time to do their jobs. As I write, it occurs to me that this is yet another way in which smaller class sizes are important. It matters in the teacher’s planning time as much as it does in the classroom. This initiative seems more about business, and the fears it induces that education is being “left behind” than about children and providing what is best for them. It is not surprising that the news is passed on here as part of a market brief. There is a lot of money to be made off of kids in schools.

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  23. Based on the many benefits of artificial intelligence in the classroom, the technology will not be able to substitute teachers, since the latter provides human connection and enhance social skills development in students

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  41. Having more than 200,000 students will have access to this AI learning platform is not a small thing. Since the company Century Tech is already using its AI technology in hundreds of schools around the world in Britain, the United States, and the Middle East, it will definitely be a great learning opportunity for the students.

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  44. Integrating the never-ending possibilities of artificial intelligence to classrooms can provide an unmatched learning experience for students. Because the platform measures gaps in students’ knowledge, the pace of their learning, their habits, and preferences, teachers can help them more effectively than before.

  45. The innovations happening in the artificial intelligence field are very exciting. Combining AI technology with classrooms for helping more than 200,000 students is definitely praiseworthy.

  46. Checking the feasibility of artificial intelligence into classrooms will be a great step in education systems all over the world. The company providing the necessary technology for this test, Century Tech, is already using the tech for many schools in the US, Britain, Middle East, etc.

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