August 19, 2021
GEN ST 297 | Future-ish | Spring 2021
Seminar Scenarios
The Spring 2021 seminar students chose to look at the nexus of artificial intelligence (AI) and higher education (HE). The four scenarios of future states for this synthesis are shared below.
Scenario 1 | Personalized Testing & Student Services. The world is much like 2021 but for students, testing and other student services are becoming much more personalized based on what and how social media and other technology learns about the particular student. Chat bots are everywhere for student services. Humans may still need to do background work in scheduling and teaching. A key question is how human learning happens when knowledge is delivered from AI.
Scenario 2. From AI to Teaching Assistants (TAs). AI is now teaching many 100 level courses and proctoring exams at that level. When appropriate, AI also leads and provides destiny for higher level courses. Classrooms are becoming more like holodecks in which an immersive experience in a completely different environment is possible. A key question is will deep fakes of people and/or information experts become an issue?
Scenario 3. Post-Pandemic Keepers. Lessons learned from the recent pandemic response identifies many aspects of virtual learning that are ‘keepers’. AI could play a major role in ongoing virtual learning given that AI could always be listening in on virtual class sessions. It could even change content based on questions or areas that seem to be challenging for students to learn. Whether being led by AI or a person, the number of students taking a course at one time could become very large and have students from all over the world. A key question is are bigger courses better for student learning?
Scenario 4. Personalized Pathways. AI allows for learning pathways that are fully personalized along the entire education life cycle. It can also allow for much higher level assistance on learning and problem solving. New ways of ‘proving’ that you know something are being developed such as impromptu, industry-specific testing by robots that just show up randomly. A student may have a personal AI teacher across their entire education. AI could mean that students learn more things but are lazier when it comes to their own curiosity and discovery. If AI tracks the interest of students across their education, could there be more interest in the humanities since students tend to have subject matters that they ‘geek out on’? Another key question is who authors and ‘watches’ what AI is teaching and who/what manages ethics and morals?