Non-Intrusive AI and Cloud based technology intervention for improving teacher efficiency and learning outcomes

• In Event: Teachers as leaders and as learners

Proposal

Modern education at all levels have undergone a vast change in last few decades in terms of curriculum, pedagogy and instruction delivery. However, other dimensions such as teacher efficiency and learning outcomes are still novice for change. The understanding and expectations of teacher and student about each other, teaching and learning styles, parental feedback, student behavioral monitoring are all significant but largely ignored facets of an efficient teacher-student interaction. The ubiquitous internet-telecom technologies combined with embedded AI enabled SaaS and IaaS platforms provide us the opportunity to carry out non-intrusive dynamic feedback and response mechanism for teacher-learner-parent triad. The use of technology in education is not a new concept. It has been there since long in various forms such as models, radio, television, projectors, computers and now new media. While all traditional technologies have limitation in terms of technology access, availability, reach, use and media type dissemination, the new media technology breaks many of these barriers and has created new horizons for all kinds of users in formal and informal contexts. Dynamic nature of technology evolution in the last few decades does not only refer to the core domain but also the allied areas which it can effect. For example, a mobile phone primarily remains a communication device, but it can easily serve as a platform to deliver learning material to millions of students spread across the globe.

Technology interventions in education have mainly focused on content creation, distribution, evaluation and feedback. Platforms such as MOOCS and MOODLE have largely and significantly addressed these objectives. Many researchers have appreciated and advocated technology interventions in education for improving teaching – learning efficiency (Grabe, 2007; Ghavifekr, Afshari & Amla Salleh, 2012). This is due to the capability of ICT in providing dynamic and proactive teaching-learning environment (Arnseth & Hatlevik, 2012). At the same time the process of adoption of ICT is not a single step, but it is ongoing and continuous steps that fully support teaching and learning and information resources (Young, 2003). The use of technology in education contributes a lot in the pedagogical aspects in which the application of ICT will lead to effective learning with the help and supports from ICT elements and components (Jamieson-Procter et al., 2013). In addition, ICT provides the help and complementary supports for both teachers and students where it involves effective learning with the help of the computers to serve the purpose of learning aids (Jorge et al., 2003). These developments addressed the traditional tutor-student relationship through technology interventions providing simplistic schema of the dynamics of the relationship. However, they fail to address the more complex dimensions such as teacher efficiency and learning outcomes by assuming that knowledge transfer is linear. Linear transfer of knowledge can be viewed as listening to lectures and studying the text. That is what is happening with most of technology interventions in education (Andriessen and Sandberg, 1999). On the other hand, Open learning systems provide a wide variety of choices for the learner. An open learning environment allows the learner to learn what he or she wants when he or she wants it in the manner of his or her choice (Van den Brande, 1993; Tergan et al., 1992). The freedom of choice in every aspect that the open systems provide has its own demerits such as student accountability (van Joolingen, 1993). Also other aspects such as monitoring teacher efficiency, teaching style, learning styles of students, scaffolding effect, well-being correlations with all these aspects are ignored by the simplistic tutor-student schema of technology intervention. This is where AI and Cloud technology provide opportunity in scalable fashion and in non-intrusive way.

The basic concept of AI/Cloud based dashboard system can be closely related to the knowledge negotiation approach in AI & Education (Moyse & Elsom-Cook, 1992; Baker, 1994). It proposes that for some domains, teachers should not aim to simply transmit their own knowledge to the student. It implies that both the teacher and the student needs to communicate and negotiate on teaching-learning dynamics to achieve targeted goals. This scenario seems very suitable to be acted out in non-intrusive AI based technological environments.

The proposed intervention aims at using AI and Cloud based technology in non-intrusive forms for teachers and students. The front end user interface would be available in a lightweight simple application to capture data points for attributes related to teacher, student, parents and other dimensions. The application would be mobile, desktop and laptop friendly. The entire non-intrusive intervention can be visualized as a combo of three layers. The FrontEnd Layer will capture the data points from teachers, students and parents. The FrontEnd Layer application could be seamlessly used with any device such as mobile, desktop or laptop. The application will be used to display AnalyticsModule Layer results. The cloud technology based StorageAndAnalytics Layer will facilitate data storage and host the analytics module. The third layer would be the AI embedded AnalyticsModule Layer to capture the essence of deliverables of the concept for enhancing efficiency of the Teacher and raised learning outcomes. The module will intelligently capture, correlate, learn more about teacher-student combo, learning styles etc.

The deliverables of the Non-Intrusive AI-Cloud Based technology intervention include the following:
• To assist the teacher to identify student clusters with specific learning styles
• To assist the teacher to identify an correlate subject content which requires specific teaching styles
• To assist teacher to identify and correlate student behavior (well being) with subject content, teaching and learning styles
• To optimize and plan resources at institutional level through sustain monitoring and change via the DashBoard system

The policy imperative is significant. The project outcomes will help in making relevant changes in educational technology for industry, in preservice teacher training and curriculum design for educational administrators.

Authors

• Virendra Singh Nirban, BITS Pilani, Pilani, Rajasthan, India

• Tanu Shukla, BITS Pilani, Pilani, Rajasthan, India

• Divya Dosaya, BITS Pilani, Pilani, Rajasthan, India

• MOUNIKA PRASHANTHI VAVILALA, BITS Pilani, Pilani, Rajasthan, India