Of course, I agree however the emphasis amongst the commercial learning and unimaginative EdTech corporations (they know who they are) is focused on centralised AI designed on the back of legacy business models and thinking.
There is nothing disruptive nor transformative about these iterative baby steps that merely seek to drive efficiencies within an already anachronistic system.
AI is poorly understood across the whole tech sector but in the EdTech sector it is far worse where the belief is that we simply use an AI to sift through the data sucked up by glorified LMS systems. The data sets are not large enough and never will be because the thinking around their purpose is so incredibly narrow. The result is a cognitive bias within the heuristics that is far worse than even basic human analysis.
I will be counting the number of companies using AI, incorrectly of course, in their sales pitches at the UK’s annual EdTech box shifting event “BETT” in January. I’m confident it will be everywhere and confused with machine learning and muddled up in sentences that include the words “big data”, “adaptive learning” and “analytics” — at which point you’re entitled to shout “house!”.
For AI to be of any real use in the field of learning it has to be, IMO, the agent of the learner.
At the risk of thread-jacking I considered some of these issues in this post:
My experience over the last 10 years is that the venture capital fuelled EdTech industry never fails to disappoint.
The disruption we’d hoped for in education has turned out to be a wholesale privatisation of state education while EdTech companies like Pearson-backed Bridge International Academies, rather then selling their app, are buying up the education system so they can monetise the data.
For the avoidance of doubt, I remain, as ever, an advocate for EdTech and it’s possibilities. I do however, believe, that we should call “BS” when we see it. :)
