Artificial Intelligence and Its Impact on Education Essay

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Introduction

Ai’s impact on education, the impact of ai on teachers, the impact of ai on students, reference list.

Rooted in computer science, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is defined by the development of digital systems that can perform tasks, which are dependent on human intelligence (Rexford, 2018). Interest in the adoption of AI in the education sector started in the 1980s when researchers were exploring the possibilities of adopting robotic technologies in learning (Mikropoulos, 2018).

Their mission was to help learners to study conveniently and efficiently. Today, some of the events and impact of AI on the education sector are concentrated in the fields of online learning, task automation, and personalization learning (Chen, Chen and Lin, 2020). The COVID-19 pandemic is a recent news event that has drawn attention to AI and its role in facilitating online learning among other virtual educational programs. This paper seeks to find out the possible impact of artificial intelligence on the education sector from the perspectives of teachers and learners.

Technology has transformed the education sector in unique ways and AI is no exception. As highlighted above, AI is a relatively new area of technological development, which has attracted global interest in academic and teaching circles. Increased awareness of the benefits of AI in the education sector and the integration of high-performance computing systems in administrative work have accelerated the pace of transformation in the field (Fengchun et al. , 2021). This change has affected different facets of learning to the extent that government agencies and companies are looking to replicate the same success in their respective fields (IBM, 2020). However, while the advantages of AI are widely reported in the corporate scene, few people understand its impact on the interactions between students and teachers. This research gap can be filled by understanding the impact of AI on the education sector, as a holistic ecosystem of learning.

As these gaps in education are minimized, AI is contributing to the growth of the education sector. Particularly, it has increased the number of online learning platforms using big data intelligence systems (Chen, Chen and Lin, 2020). This outcome has been achieved by exploiting opportunities in big data analysis to enhance educational outcomes (IBM, 2020). Overall, the positive contributions that AI has had to the education sector mean that it has expanded opportunities for growth and development in the education sector (Rexford, 2018). Therefore, teachers are likely to benefit from increased opportunities for learning and growth that would emerge from the adoption of AI in the education system.

The impact of AI on teachers can be estimated by examining its effects on the learning environment. Some of the positive outcomes that teachers have associated with AI adoption include increased work efficiency, expanded opportunities for career growth, and an improved rate of innovation adoption (Chen, Chen and Lin, 2020). These benefits are achievable because AI makes it possible to automate learning activities. This process gives teachers the freedom to complete supplementary tasks that support their core activities. At the same time, the freedom they enjoy may be used to enhance creativity and innovation in their teaching practice. Despite the positive outcomes of AI adoption in learning, it undermines the relevance of teachers as educators (Fengchun et al., 2021). This concern is shared among educators because the increased reliance on robotics and automation through AI adoption has created conditions for learning to occur without human input. Therefore, there is a risk that teacher participation may be replaced by machine input.

Performance Evaluation emerges as a critical area where teachers can benefit from AI adoption. This outcome is feasible because AI empowers teachers to monitor the behaviors of their learners and the differences in their scores over a specific time (Mikropoulos, 2018). This comparative analysis is achievable using advanced data management techniques in AI-backed performance appraisal systems (Fengchun et al., 2021). Researchers have used these systems to enhance adaptive group formation programs where groups of students are formed based on a balance of the strengths and weaknesses of the members (Live Tiles, 2021). The information collected using AI-backed data analysis techniques can be recalibrated to capture different types of data. For example, teachers have used AI to understand students’ learning patterns and the correlation between these configurations with the individual understanding of learning concepts (Rexford, 2018). Furthermore, advanced biometric techniques in AI have made it possible for teachers to assess their student’s learning attentiveness.

Overall, the contributions of AI to the teaching practice empower teachers to redesign their learning programs to fill the gaps identified in the performance assessments. Employing the capabilities of AI in their teaching programs has also made it possible to personalize their curriculums to empower students to learn more effectively (Live Tiles, 2021). Nonetheless, the benefits of AI to teachers could be undermined by the possibility of job losses due to the replacement of human labor with machines and robots (Gulson et al. , 2018). These fears are yet to materialize but indications suggest that AI adoption may elevate the importance of machines above those of human beings in learning.

The benefits of AI to teachers can be replicated in student learning because learners are recipients of the teaching strategies adopted by teachers. In this regard, AI has created unique benefits for different groups of learners based on the supportive role it plays in the education sector (Fengchun et al., 2021). For example, it has created conditions necessary for the use of virtual reality in learning. This development has created an opportunity for students to learn at their pace (Live Tiles, 2021). Allowing students to learn at their pace has enhanced their learning experiences because of varied learning speeds. The creation of virtual reality using AI learning has played a significant role in promoting equality in learning by adapting to different learning needs (Live Tiles, 2021). For example, it has helped students to better track their performances at home and identify areas of improvement in the process. In this regard, the adoption of AI in learning has allowed for the customization of learning styles to improve students’ attention and involvement in learning.

AI also benefits students by personalizing education activities to suit different learning styles and competencies. In this analysis, AI holds the promise to develop personalized learning at scale by customizing tools and features of learning in contemporary education systems (du Boulay, 2016). Personalized learning offers several benefits to students, including a reduction in learning time, increased levels of engagement with teachers, improved knowledge retention, and increased motivation to study (Fengchun et al., 2021). The presence of these benefits means that AI enriches students’ learning experiences. Furthermore, AI shares the promise of expanding educational opportunities for people who would have otherwise been unable to access learning opportunities. For example, disabled people are unable to access the same quality of education as ordinary students do. Today, technology has made it possible for these underserved learners to access education services.

Based on the findings highlighted above, AI has made it possible to customize education services to suit the needs of unique groups of learners. By extension, AI has made it possible for teachers to select the most appropriate teaching methods to use for these student groups (du Boulay, 2016). Teachers have reported positive outcomes of using AI to meet the needs of these underserved learners (Fengchun et al., 2021). For example, through online learning, some of them have learned to be more patient and tolerant when interacting with disabled students (Fengchun et al., 2021). AI has also made it possible to integrate the educational and curriculum development plans of disabled and mainstream students, thereby standardizing the education outcomes across the divide. Broadly, these statements indicate that the expansion of opportunities via AI adoption has increased access to education services for underserved groups of learners.

Overall, AI holds the promise to solve most educational challenges that affect the world today. UNESCO (2021) affirms this statement by saying that AI can address most problems in learning through innovation. Therefore, there is hope that the adoption of new technology would accelerate the process of streamlining the education sector. This outcome could be achieved by improving the design of AI learning programs to make them more effective in meeting student and teachers’ needs. This contribution to learning will help to maximize the positive impact and minimize the negative effects of AI on both parties.

The findings of this study demonstrate that the application of AI in education has a largely positive impact on students and teachers. The positive effects are summarized as follows: improved access to education for underserved populations improved teaching practices/instructional learning, and enhanced enthusiasm for students to stay in school. Despite the existence of these positive views, negative outcomes have also been highlighted in this paper. They include the potential for job losses, an increase in education inequalities, and the high cost of installing AI systems. These concerns are relevant to the adoption of AI in the education sector but the benefits of integration outweigh them. Therefore, there should be more support given to educational institutions that intend to adopt AI. Overall, this study demonstrates that AI is beneficial to the education sector. It will improve the quality of teaching, help students to understand knowledge quickly, and spread knowledge via the expansion of educational opportunities.

Chen, L., Chen, P. and Lin, Z. (2020) ‘Artificial intelligence in education: a review’, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Access , 8(1), pp. 75264-75278.

du Boulay, B. (2016) Artificial intelligence as an effective classroom assistant. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Intelligent Systems , 31(6), pp.76–81.

Fengchun, M. et al. (2021) AI and education: a guide for policymakers . Paris: UNESCO Publishing.

Gulson, K . et al. (2018) Education, work and Australian society in an AI world . Web.

IBM. (2020) Artificial intelligence . Web.

Live Tiles. (2021) 15 pros and 6 cons of artificial intelligence in the classroom . Web.

Mikropoulos, T. A. (2018) Research on e-Learning and ICT in education: technological, pedagogical and instructional perspectives . New York, NY: Springer.

Rexford, J. (2018) The role of education in AI (and vice versa). Web.

Seo, K. et al. (2021) The impact of artificial intelligence on learner–instructor interaction in online learning. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education , 18(54), pp. 1-12.

UNESCO. (2021) Artificial intelligence in education . Web.

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Artificial Intelligence and Education: A Reading List

A bibliography to help educators prepare students and themselves for a future shaped by AI—with all its opportunities and drawbacks.

Young black student studying at night at home, with a help of a laptop computer.

How should education change to address, incorporate, or challenge today’s AI systems, especially powerful large language models? What role should educators and scholars play in shaping the future of generative AI? The release of ChatGPT in November 2022 triggered an explosion of news, opinion pieces, and social media posts addressing these questions. Yet many are not aware of the current and historical body of academic work that offers clarity, substance, and nuance to enrich the discourse.

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Linking the terms “AI” and “education” invites a constellation of discussions. This selection of articles is hardly comprehensive, but it includes explanations of AI concepts and provides historical context for today’s systems. It describes a range of possible educational applications as well as adverse impacts, such as learning loss and increased inequity. Some articles touch on philosophical questions about AI in relation to learning, thinking, and human communication. Others will help educators prepare students for civic participation around concerns including information integrity, impacts on jobs, and energy consumption. Yet others outline educator and student rights in relation to AI and exhort educators to share their expertise in societal and industry discussions on the future of AI.

Nabeel Gillani, Rebecca Eynon, Catherine Chiabaut, and Kelsey Finkel, “ Unpacking the ‘Black Box’ of AI in Education ,” Educational Technology & Society 26, no. 1 (2023): 99–111.

Whether we’re aware of it or not, AI was already widespread in education before ChatGPT. Nabeel Gillani et al. describe AI applications such as learning analytics and adaptive learning systems, automated communications with students, early warning systems, and automated writing assessment. They seek to help educators develop literacy around the capacities and risks of these systems by providing an accessible introduction to machine learning and deep learning as well as rule-based AI. They present a cautious view, calling for scrutiny of bias in such systems and inequitable distribution of risks and benefits. They hope that engineers will collaborate deeply with educators on the development of such systems.

Jürgen Rudolph, Samson Tan, and Shannon Tan, “ ChatGPT: Bullshit Spewer or the End of Traditional Assessments in Higher Education? ” The Journal of Applied Learning and Teaching 6, no. 1 (January 24, 2023).

Jürgen Rudolph et al. give a practically oriented overview of ChatGPT’s implications for higher education. They explain the statistical nature of large language models as they tell the history of OpenAI and its attempts to mitigate bias and risk in the development of ChatGPT. They illustrate ways ChatGPT can be used with examples and screenshots. Their literature review shows the state of artificial intelligence in education (AIEd) as of January 2023. An extensive list of challenges and opportunities culminates in a set of recommendations that emphasizes explicit policy as well as expanding digital literacy education to include AI.

Emily M. Bender, Timnit Gebru, Angela McMillan-Major, and Shmargaret Shmitchell, “ On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? 🦜 ,” FAccT ’21: Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (March 2021): 610–623.

Student and faculty understanding of the risks and impacts of large language models is central to AI literacy and civic participation around AI policy. This hugely influential paper details documented and likely adverse impacts of the current data-and-resource-intensive, non-transparent mode of development of these models. Bender et al. emphasize the ways in which these costs will likely be borne disproportionately by marginalized groups. They call for transparency around the energy use and cost of these models as well as transparency around the data used to train them. They warn that models perpetuate and even amplify human biases and that the seeming coherence of these systems’ outputs can be used for malicious purposes even though it doesn’t reflect real understanding.

The authors argue that inclusive participation in development can encourage alternate development paths that are less resource intensive. They further argue that beneficial applications for marginalized groups, such as improved automatic speech recognition systems, must be accompanied by plans to mitigate harm.

Erik Brynjolfsson, “ The Turing Trap: The Promise & Peril of Human-Like Artificial Intelligence ,” Daedalus 151, no. 2 (2022): 272–87.

Erik Brynjolfsson argues that when we think of artificial intelligence as aiming to substitute for human intelligence, we miss the opportunity to focus on how it can complement and extend human capabilities. Brynjolfsson calls for policy that shifts AI development incentives away from automation toward augmentation. Automation is more likely to result in the elimination of lower-level jobs and in growing inequality. He points educators toward augmentation as a framework for thinking about AI applications that assist learning and teaching. How can we create incentives for AI to support and extend what teachers do rather than substituting for teachers? And how can we encourage students to use AI to extend their thinking and learning rather than using AI to skip learning?

Kevin Scott, “ I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means: Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Work & Scale ,” Daedalus 151, no. 2 (2022): 75–84.

Brynjolfsson’s focus on AI as “augmentation” converges with Microsoft computer scientist Kevin Scott’s focus on “cognitive assistance.” Steering discussion of AI away from visions of autonomous systems with their own goals, Scott argues that near-term AI will serve to help humans with cognitive work. Scott situates this assistance in relation to evolving historical definitions of work and the way in which tools for work embody generalized knowledge about specific domains. He’s intrigued by the way deep neural networks can represent domain knowledge in new ways, as seen in the unexpected coding capabilities offered by OpenAI’s GPT-3 language model, which have enabled people with less technical knowledge to code. His article can help educators frame discussions of how students should build knowledge and what knowledge is still relevant in contexts where AI assistance is nearly ubiquitous.

Laura D. Tyson and John Zysman, “ Automation, AI & Work ,” Daedalus 151, no. 2 (2022): 256–71.

How can educators prepare students for future work environments integrated with AI and advise students on how majors and career paths may be affected by AI automation? And how can educators prepare students to participate in discussions of government policy around AI and work? Laura Tyson and John Zysman emphasize the importance of policy in determining how economic gains due to AI are distributed and how well workers weather disruptions due to AI. They observe that recent trends in automation and gig work have exacerbated inequality and reduced the supply of “good” jobs for low- and middle-income workers. They predict that AI will intensify these effects, but they point to the way collective bargaining, social insurance, and protections for gig workers have mitigated such impacts in countries like Germany. They argue that such interventions can serve as models to help frame discussions of intelligent labor policies for “an inclusive AI era.”

Todd C. Helmus, Artificial Intelligence, Deepfakes, and Disinformation: A Primer (RAND Corporation, 2022).

Educators’ considerations of academic integrity and AI text can draw on parallel discussions of authenticity and labeling of AI content in other societal contexts. Artificial intelligence has made deepfake audio, video, and images as well as generated text much more difficult to detect as such. Here, Todd Helmus considers the consequences to political systems and individuals as he offers a review of the ways in which these can and have been used to promote disinformation. He considers ways to identify deepfakes and ways to authenticate provenance of videos and images. Helmus advocates for regulatory action, tools for journalistic scrutiny, and widespread efforts to promote media literacy. As well as informing discussions of authenticity in educational contexts, this report might help us shape curricula to teach students about the risks of deepfakes and unlabeled AI.

William Hasselberger, “ Can Machines Have Common Sense? ” The New Atlantis 65 (2021): 94–109.

Students, by definition, are engaged in developing their cognitive capacities; their understanding of their own intelligence is in flux and may be influenced by their interactions with AI systems and by AI hype. In his review of The Myth of Artificial Intelligence: Why Computers Can’t Think the Way We Do by Erik J. Larson, William Hasselberger warns that in overestimating AI’s ability to mimic human intelligence we devalue the human and overlook human capacities that are integral to everyday life decision making, understanding, and reasoning. Hasselberger provides examples of both academic and everyday common-sense reasoning that continue to be out of reach for AI. He provides a historical overview of debates around the limits of artificial intelligence and its implications for our understanding of human intelligence, citing the likes of Alan Turing and Marvin Minsky as well as contemporary discussions of data-driven language models.

Gwo-Jen Hwang and Nian-Shing Chen, “ Exploring the Potential of Generative Artificial Intelligence in Education: Applications, Challenges, and Future Research Directions ,” Educational Technology & Society 26, no. 2 (2023).

Gwo-Jen Hwang and Nian-Shing Chen are enthusiastic about the potential benefits of incorporating generative AI into education. They outline a variety of roles a large language model like ChatGPT might play, from student to tutor to peer to domain expert to administrator. For example, educators might assign students to “teach” ChatGPT on a subject. Hwang and Chen provide sample ChatGPT session transcripts to illustrate their suggestions. They share prompting techniques to help educators better design AI-based teaching strategies. At the same time, they are concerned about student overreliance on generative AI. They urge educators to guide students to use it critically and to reflect on their interactions with AI. Hwang and Chen don’t touch on concerns about bias, inaccuracy, or fabrication, but they call for further research into the impact of integrating generative AI on learning outcomes.

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Lauren Goodlad and Samuel Baker, “ Now the Humanities Can Disrupt ‘AI’ ,” Public Books (February 20, 2023).

Lauren Goodlad and Samuel Baker situate both academic integrity concerns and the pressures on educators to “embrace” AI in the context of market forces. They ground their discussion of AI risks in a deep technical understanding of the limits of predictive models at mimicking human intelligence. Goodlad and Baker urge educators to communicate the purpose and value of teaching with writing to help students engage with the plurality of the world and communicate with others. Beyond the classroom, they argue, educators should question tech industry narratives and participate in public discussion on regulation and the future of AI. They see higher education as resilient: academic skepticism about former waves of hype around MOOCs, for example, suggests that educators will not likely be dazzled or terrified into submission to AI. Goodlad and Baker hope we will instead take up our place as experts who should help shape the future of the role of machines in human thought and communication.

Kathryn Conrad, “ Sneak Preview: A Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights for Education ,” Critical AI 2.1 (July 17, 2023).

How can the field of education put the needs of students and scholars first as we shape our response to AI, the way we teach about it, and the way we might incorporate it into pedagogy? Kathryn Conrad’s manifesto builds on and extends the Biden administration’s Office of Science and Technology Policy 2022 “Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights.” Conrad argues that educators should have input into institutional policies on AI and access to professional development around AI. Instructors should be able to decide whether and how to incorporate AI into pedagogy, basing their decisions on expert recommendations and peer-reviewed research. Conrad outlines student rights around AI systems, including the right to know when AI is being used to evaluate them and the right to request alternate human evaluation. They deserve detailed instructor guidance on policies around AI use without fear of reprisals. Conrad maintains that students should be able to appeal any charges of academic misconduct involving AI, and they should be offered alternatives to any AI-based assignments that might put their creative work at risk of exposure or use without compensation. Both students’ and educators’ legal rights must be respected in any educational application of automated generative systems.

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  • Research article
  • Open access
  • Published: 24 April 2023

Artificial intelligence in higher education: the state of the field

  • Helen Crompton   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-1775-8219 1 , 3 &
  • Diane Burke 2  

International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education volume  20 , Article number:  22 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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This systematic review provides unique findings with an up-to-date examination of artificial intelligence (AI) in higher education (HE) from 2016 to 2022. Using PRISMA principles and protocol, 138 articles were identified for a full examination. Using a priori, and grounded coding, the data from the 138 articles were extracted, analyzed, and coded. The findings of this study show that in 2021 and 2022, publications rose nearly two to three times the number of previous years. With this rapid rise in the number of AIEd HE publications, new trends have emerged. The findings show that research was conducted in six of the seven continents of the world. The trend has shifted from the US to China leading in the number of publications. Another new trend is in the researcher affiliation as prior studies showed a lack of researchers from departments of education. This has now changed to be the most dominant department. Undergraduate students were the most studied students at 72%. Similar to the findings of other studies, language learning was the most common subject domain. This included writing, reading, and vocabulary acquisition. In examination of who the AIEd was intended for 72% of the studies focused on students, 17% instructors, and 11% managers. In answering the overarching question of how AIEd was used in HE, grounded coding was used. Five usage codes emerged from the data: (1) Assessment/Evaluation, (2) Predicting, (3) AI Assistant, (4) Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS), and (5) Managing Student Learning. This systematic review revealed gaps in the literature to be used as a springboard for future researchers, including new tools, such as Chat GPT.

A systematic review examining AIEd in higher education (HE) up to the end of 2022.

Unique findings in the switch from US to China in the most studies published.

A two to threefold increase in studies published in 2021 and 2022 to prior years.

AIEd was used for: Assessment/Evaluation, Predicting, AI Assistant, Intelligent Tutoring System, and Managing Student Learning.

Introduction

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in higher education (HE) has risen quickly in the last 5 years (Chu et al., 2022 ), with a concomitant proliferation of new AI tools available. Scholars (viz., Chen et al., 2020 ; Crompton et al., 2020 , 2021 ) report on the affordances of AI to both instructors and students in HE. These benefits include the use of AI in HE to adapt instruction to the needs of different types of learners (Verdú et al., 2017 ), in providing customized prompt feedback (Dever et al., 2020 ), in developing assessments (Baykasoğlu et al., 2018 ), and predict academic success (Çağataylı & Çelebi, 2022 ). These studies help to inform educators about how artificial intelligence in education (AIEd) can be used in higher education.

Nonetheless, a gap has been highlighted by scholars (viz., Hrastinski et al., 2019 ; Zawacki-Richter et al., 2019 ) regarding an understanding of the collective affordances provided through the use of AI in HE. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine extant research from 2016 to 2022 to provide an up-to-date systematic review of how AI is being used in the HE context.

Artificial intelligence has become pervasive in the lives of twenty-first century citizens and is being proclaimed as a tool that can be used to enhance and advance all sectors of our lives (Górriz et al., 2020 ). The application of AI has attracted great interest in HE which is highly influenced by the development of information and communication technologies (Alajmi et al., 2020 ). AI is a tool used across subject disciplines, including language education (Liang et al., 2021 ), engineering education (Shukla et al., 2019 ), mathematics education (Hwang & Tu, 2021 ) and medical education (Winkler-Schwartz et al., 2019 ),

Artificial intelligence

The term artificial intelligence is not new. It was coined in 1956 by McCarthy (Cristianini, 2016 ) who followed up on the work of Turing (e.g., Turing, 1937 , 1950 ). Turing described the existence of intelligent reasoning and thinking that could go into intelligent machines. The definition of AI has grown and changed since 1956, as there has been significant advancements in AI capabilities. A current definition of AI is “computing systems that are able to engage in human-like processes such as learning, adapting, synthesizing, self-correction and the use of data for complex processing tasks” (Popenici et al., 2017 , p. 2). The interdisciplinary interest from scholars from linguistics, psychology, education, and neuroscience who connect AI to nomenclature, perceptions and knowledge in their own disciplines could create a challenge when defining AI. This has created the need to create categories of AI within specific disciplinary areas. This paper focuses on the category of AI in Education (AIEd) and how AI is specifically used in higher educational contexts.

As the field of AIEd is growing and changing rapidly, there is a need to increase the academic understanding of AIEd. Scholars (viz., Hrastinski et al., 2019 ; Zawacki-Richter et al., 2019 ) have drawn attention to the need to increase the understanding of the power of AIEd in educational contexts. The following section provides a summary of the previous research regarding AIEd.

Extant systematic reviews

This growing interest in AIEd has led scholars to investigate the research on the use of artificial intelligence in education. Some scholars have conducted systematic reviews to focus on a specific subject domain. For example, Liang et. al. ( 2021 ) conducted a systematic review and bibliographic analysis the roles and research foci of AI in language education. Shukla et. al. ( 2019 ) focused their longitudinal bibliometric analysis on 30 years of using AI in Engineering. Hwang and Tu ( 2021 ) conducted a bibliometric mapping analysis on the roles and trends in the use of AI in mathematics education, and Winkler-Schwartz et. al. ( 2019 ) specifically examined the use of AI in medical education in looking for best practices in the use of machine learning to assess surgical expertise. These studies provide a specific focus on the use of AIEd in HE but do not provide an understanding of AI across HE.

On a broader view of AIEd in HE, Ouyang et. al. ( 2022 ) conducted a systematic review of AIEd in online higher education and investigated the literature regarding the use of AI from 2011 to 2020. The findings show that performance prediction, resource recommendation, automatic assessment, and improvement of learning experiences are the four main functions of AI applications in online higher education. Salas-Pilco and Yang ( 2022 ) focused on AI applications in Latin American higher education. The results revealed that the main AI applications in higher education in Latin America are: (1) predictive modeling, (2) intelligent analytics, (3) assistive technology, (4) automatic content analysis, and (5) image analytics. These studies provide valuable information for the online and Latin American context but not an overarching examination of AIEd in HE.

Studies have been conducted to examine HE. Hinojo-Lucena et. al. ( 2019 ) conducted a bibliometric study on the impact of AIEd in HE. They analyzed the scientific production of AIEd HE publications indexed in Web of Science and Scopus databases from 2007 to 2017. This study revealed that most of the published document types were proceedings papers. The United States had the highest number of publications, and the most cited articles were about implementing virtual tutoring to improve learning. Chu et. al. ( 2022 ) reviewed the top 50 most cited articles on AI in HE from 1996 to 2020, revealing that predictions of students’ learning status were most frequently discussed. AI technology was most frequently applied in engineering courses, and AI technologies most often had a role in profiling and prediction. Finally, Zawacki-Richter et. al. ( 2019 ) analyzed AIEd in HE from 2007 to 2018 to reveal four primary uses of AIEd: (1) profiling and prediction, (2) assessment and evaluation, (3) adaptive systems and personalization, and (4) intelligent tutoring systems. There do not appear to be any studies examining the last 2 years of AIEd in HE, and these authors describe the rapid speed of both AI development and the use of AIEd in HE and call for further research in this area.

Purpose of the study

The purpose of this study is in response to the appeal from scholars (viz., Chu et al., 2022 ; Hinojo-Lucena et al., 2019 ; Zawacki-Richter et al., 2019 ) to research to investigate the benefits and challenges of AIEd within HE settings. As the academic knowledge of AIEd HE finished with studies examining up to 2020, this study provides the most up-to-date analysis examining research through to the end of 2022.

The overarching question for this study is: what are the trends in HE research regarding the use of AIEd? The first two questions provide contextual information, such as where the studies occurred and the disciplines AI was used in. These contextual details are important for presenting the main findings of the third question of how AI is being used in HE.

In what geographical location was the AIEd research conducted, and how has the trend in the number of publications evolved across the years?

What departments were the first authors affiliated with, and what were the academic levels and subject domains in which AIEd research was being conducted?

Who are the intended users of the AI technologies and what are the applications of AI in higher education?

A PRISMA systematic review methodology was used to answer three questions guiding this study. PRISMA principles (Page et al., 2021 ) were used throughout the study. The PRISMA extension Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis for Protocols (PRISMA-P; Moher et al., 2015 ) were utilized in this study to provide an a priori roadmap to conduct a rigorous systematic review. Furthermore, the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA principles; Page et al., 2021 ) were used to search, identify, and select articles to be included in the research were used for searching, identifying, and selecting articles, then in how to read, extract, and manage the secondary data gathered from those studies (Moher et al., 2015 , PRISMA Statement, 2021 ). This systematic review approach supports an unbiased synthesis of the data in an impartial way (Hemingway & Brereton, 2009 ). Within the systematic review methodology, extracted data were aggregated and presented as whole numbers and percentages. A qualitative deductive and inductive coding methodology was also used to analyze extant data and generate new theories on the use of AI in HE (Gough et al., 2017 ).

The research begins with the search for the research articles to be included in the study. Based on the research question, the study parameters are defined including the search years, quality and types of publications to be included. Next, databases and journals are selected. A Boolean search is created and used for the search of those databases and journals. Once a set of publications are located from those searches, they are then examined against an inclusion and exclusion criteria to determine which studies will be included in the final study. The relevant data to match the research questions is then extracted from the final set of studies and coded. This method section is organized to describe each of these methods with full details to ensure transparency.

Search strategy

Only peer-reviewed journal articles were selected for examination in this systematic review. This ensured a level of confidence in the quality of the studies selected (Gough et al., 2017 ). The search parameters narrowed the search focus to include studies published in 2016 to 2022. This timeframe was selected to ensure the research was up to date, which is especially important with the rapid change in technology and AIEd.

The data retrieval protocol employed an electronic and a hand search. The electronic search included educational databases within EBSCOhost. Then an additional electronic search was conducted of Wiley Online Library, JSTOR, Science Direct, and Web of Science. Within each of these databases a full text search was conducted. Aligned to the research topic and questions, the Boolean search included terms related to AI, higher education, and learning. The Boolean search is listed in Table 1 . In the initial test search, the terms “machine learning” OR “intelligent support” OR “intelligent virtual reality” OR “chatbot” OR “automated tutor” OR “intelligent agent” OR “expert system” OR “neural network” OR “natural language processing” were used. These were removed as they were subcategories of terms found in Part 1 of the search. Furthermore, inclusion of these specific AI terms resulted in a large number of computer science courses that were focused on learning about AI and not the use of AI in learning.

Part 2 of the search ensured that articles involved formal university education. The terms higher education and tertiary were both used to recognize the different terms used in different countries. The final Boolean search was “Artificial intelligence” OR AI OR “smart technologies” OR “intelligent technologies” AND “higher education” OR tertiary OR graduate OR undergraduate. Scholars (viz., Ouyang et al., 2022 ) who conducted a systematic review on AIEd in HE up to 2020 noted that they missed relevant articles from their study, and other relevant journals should intentionally be examined. Therefore, a hand search was also conducted to include an examination of other journals relevant to AIEd that may not be included in the databases. This is important as the field of AIEd is still relatively new, and journals focused on this field may not yet be indexed in databases. The hand search included: The International Journal of Learning Analytics and Artificial Intelligence in Education, the International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education, and Computers & Education: Artificial Intelligence.

Electronic and hand searches resulted in 371 articles for possible inclusion. The search parameters within the electronic database search narrowed the search to articles published from 2016 to 2022, per-reviewed journal articles, and duplicates. Further screening was conducted manually, as each of the 138 articles were reviewed in full by two researchers to examine a match against the inclusion and exclusion criteria found in Table 2 .

The inter-rater reliability was calculated by percentage agreement (Belur et al., 2018 ). The researchers reached a 95% agreement for the coding. Further discussion of misaligned articles resulted in a 100% agreement. This screening process against inclusion and exclusion criteria resulted in the exclusion of 237 articles. This included the duplicates and those removed as part of the inclusion and exclusion criteria, see Fig.  1 . Leaving 138 articles for inclusion in this systematic review.

figure 1

(From: Page et al., 2021 )

PRISMA flow chart of article identification and screening

The 138 articles were then coded to answer each of the research questions using deductive and inductive coding methods. Deductive coding involves examining data using a priori codes. A priori are pre-determined criteria and this process was used to code the countries, years, author affiliations, academic levels, and domains in the respective groups. Author affiliations were coded using the academic department of the first author of the study. First authors were chosen as that person is the primary researcher of the study and this follows past research practice (e.g., Zawacki-Richter et al., 2019 ). Who the AI was intended for was also coded using the a priori codes of Student, Instructor, Manager or Others. The Manager code was used for those who are involved in organizational tasks, e.g., tracking enrollment. Others was used for those not fitting the other three categories.

Inductive coding was used for the overarching question of this study in examining how the AI was being used in HE. Researchers of extant systematic reviews on AIEd in HE (viz., Chu et al., 2022 ; Zawacki-Richter et al., 2019 ) often used an a priori framework as researchers matched the use of AI to pre-existing frameworks. A grounded coding methodology (Strauss & Corbin, 1995 ) was selected for this study to allow findings of the trends on AIEd in HE to emerge from the data. This is important as it allows a direct understanding of how AI is being used rather than how researchers may think it is being used and fitting the data to pre-existing ideas.

Grounded coding process involved extracting how the AI was being used in HE from the articles. “In vivo” (Saldana, 2015 ) coding was also used alongside grounded coding. In vivo codes are when codes use language directly from the article to capture the primary authors’ language and ensure consistency with their findings. The grounded coding design used a constant comparative method. Researchers identified important text from articles related to the use of AI, and through an iterative process, initial codes led to axial codes with a constant comparison of uses of AI with uses of AI, then of uses of AI with codes, and codes with codes. Codes were deemed theoretically saturated when the majority of the data fit with one of the codes. For both the a priori and the grounded coding, two researchers coded and reached an inter-rater percentage agreement of 96%. After discussing misaligned articles, a 100% agreement was achieved.

Findings and discussion

The findings and discussion section are organized by the three questions guiding this study. The first two questions provide contextual information on the AIEd research, and the final question provides a rigorous investigation into how AI is being used in HE.

RQ1. In what geographical location was the AIEd research conducted, and how has the trend in the number of publications evolved across the years?

The 138 studies took place across 31 countries in six of seven continents of the world. Nonetheless, that distribution was not equal across continents. Asia had the largest number of AIEd studies in HE at 41%. Of the seven countries represented in Asia, 42 of the 58 studies were conducted in Taiwan and China. Europe, at 30%, was the second largest continent and had 15 countries ranging from one to eight studies a piece. North America, at 21% of the studies was the continent with the third largest number of studies, with the USA producing 21 of the 29 studies in that continent. The 21 studies from the USA places it second behind China. Only 1% of studies were conducted in South America and 2% in Africa. See Fig.  2 for a visual representation of study distribution across countries. Those continents with high numbers of studies are from high income countries and those with low numbers have a paucity of publications in low-income countries.

figure 2

Geographical distribution of the AIEd HE studies

Data from Zawacki-Richter et. al.’s ( 2019 ) 2007–2018 systematic review examining countries found that the USA conducted the most studies across the globe at 43 out of 146, and China had the second largest at eleven of the 146 papers. Researchers have noted a rapid trend in Chinese researchers publishing more papers on AI and securing more patents than their US counterparts in a field that was originally led by the US (viz., Li et al., 2021 ). The data from this study corroborate this trend in China leading in the number of AIEd publications.

With the accelerated use of AI in society, gathering data to examine the use of AIEd in HE is useful in providing the scholarly community with specific information on that growth and if it is as prolific as anticipated by scholars (e.g., Chu et al., 2022 ). The analysis of data of the 138 studies shows that the trend towards the use of AIEd in HE has greatly increased. There is a drop in 2019, but then a great rise in 2021 and 2022; see Fig.  3 .

figure 3

Chronological trend in AIEd in HE

Data on the rise in AIEd in HE is similar to the findings of Chu et. al. ( 2022 ) who noted an increase from 1996 to 2010 and 2011–2020. Nonetheless Chu’s parameters are across decades, and the rise is to be anticipated with a relatively new technology across a longitudinal review. Data from this study show a dramatic rise since 2020 with a 150% increase from the prior 2 years 2020–2019. The rise in 2021 and 2022 in HE could have been caused by the vast increase in HE faculty having to teach with technology during the pandemic lockdown. Faculty worldwide were using technologies, including AI, to explore how they could continue teaching and learning that was often face-to-face prior to lockdown. The disadvantage of this rapid adoption of technology is that there was little time to explore the possibilities of AI to transform learning, and AI may have been used to replicate past teaching practices, without considering new strategies previously inconceivable with the affordances of AI.

However, in a further examination of the research from 2021 to 2022, it appears that there are new strategies being considered. For example, Liu et. al.’s, 2022 study used AIEd to provide information on students’ interactions in an online environment and examine their cognitive effort. In Yao’s study in 2022, he examined the use of AI to determine student emotions while learning.

RQ2. What departments were the first authors affiliated with, and what were the academic levels and subject domains in which AIEd research was being conducted?

Department affiliations

Data from the AIEd HE studies show that of the first authors were most frequently from colleges of education (28%), followed by computer science (20%). Figure  4 presents the 15 academic affiliations of the authors found in the studies. The wide variety of affiliations demonstrate the variety of ways AI can be used in various educational disciplines, and how faculty in diverse areas, including tourism, music, and public affairs were interested in how AI can be used for educational purposes.

figure 4

Research affiliations

In an extant AIED HE systematic review, Zawacki-Richter et. al.’s ( 2019 ) named their study Systematic review of research on artificial intelligence applications in higher education—where are the educators? In this study, the authors were keen to highlight that of the AIEd studies in HE, only six percent were written by researchers directly connected to the field of education, (i.e., from a college of education). The researchers found a great lack in pedagogical and ethical implications of implementing AI in HE and that there was a need for more educational perspectives on AI developments from educators conducting this work. It appears from our data that educators are now showing greater interest in leading these research endeavors, with the highest affiliated group belonging to education. This may again be due to the pandemic and those in the field of education needing to support faculty in other disciplines, and/or that they themselves needed to explore technologies for their own teaching during the lockdown. This may also be due to uptake in professors in education becoming familiar with AI tools also driven by a societal increased attention. As the focus of much research by education faculty is on teaching and learning, they are in an important position to be able to share their research with faculty in other disciplines regarding the potential affordances of AIEd.

Academic levels

The a priori coding of academic levels show that the majority of studies involved undergraduate students with 99 of the 138 (72%) focused on these students. This was in comparison to the 12 of 138 (9%) for graduate students. Some of the studies used AI for both academic levels: see Fig.  5

figure 5

Academic level distribution by number of articles

This high percentage of studies focused on the undergraduate population was congruent with an earlier AIED HE systematic review (viz., Zawacki-Richter et al., 2019 ) who also reported student academic levels. This focus on undergraduate students may be due to the variety of affordances offered by AIEd, such as predictive analytics on dropouts and academic performance. These uses of AI may be less required for graduate students who already have a record of performance from their undergraduate years. Another reason for this demographic focus can also be convenience sampling, as researchers in HE typically has a much larger and accessible undergraduate population than graduates. This disparity between undergraduates and graduate populations is a concern, as AIEd has the potential to be valuable in both settings.

Subject domains

The studies were coded into 14 areas in HE; with 13 in a subject domain and one category of AIEd used in HE management of students; See Fig.  6 . There is not a wide difference in the percentages of top subject domains, with language learning at 17%, computer science at 16%, and engineering at 12%. The management of students category appeared third on the list at 14%. Prior studies have also found AIEd often used for language learning (viz., Crompton et al., 2021 ; Zawacki-Richter et al., 2019 ). These results are different, however, from Chu et. al.’s ( 2022 ) findings that show engineering dramatically leading with 20 of the 50 studies, with other subjects, such as language learning, appearing once or twice. This study appears to be an outlier that while the searches were conducted in similar databases, the studies only included 50 studies from 1996 to 2020.

figure 6

Subject domains of AIEd in HE

Previous scholars primarily focusing on language learning using AI for writing, reading, and vocabulary acquisition used the affordances of natural language processing and intelligent tutoring systems (e.g., Liang et al., 2021 ). This is similar to the findings in studies with AI used for automated feedback of writing in a foreign language (Ayse et al., 2022 ), and AI translation support (Al-Tuwayrish, 2016 ). The large use of AI for managerial activities in this systematic review focused on making predictions (12 studies) and then admissions (three studies). This is positive to see this use of AI to look across multiple databases to see trends emerging from data that may not have been anticipated and cross referenced before (Crompton et al., 2022 ). For example, to examine dropouts, researchers may consider examining class attendance, and may not examine other factors that appear unrelated. AI analysis can examine all factors and may find that dropping out is due to factors beyond class attendance.

RQ3. Who are the intended users of the AI technologies and what are the applications of AI in higher education?

Intended user of AI

Of the 138 articles, the a priori coding shows that 72% of the studies focused on Students, followed by a focus on Instructors at 17%, and Managers at 11%, see Fig.  7 . The studies provided examples of AI being used to provide support to students, such as access to learning materials for inclusive learning (Gupta & Chen, 2022 ), provide immediate answers to student questions, self-testing opportunities (Yao, 2022 ), and instant personalized feedback (Mousavi et al., 2020 ).

figure 7

Intended user

The data revealed a large emphasis on students in the use of AIEd in HE. This user focus is different from a recent systematic review on AIEd in K-12 that found that AIEd studies in K-12 settings prioritized teachers (Crompton et al., 2022 ). This may appear that HE uses AI to focus more on students than in K-12. However, this large number of student studies in HE may be due to the student population being more easily accessibility to HE researchers who may study their own students. The ethical review process is also typically much shorter in HE than in K-12. Therefore, the data on the intended focus should be reviewed while keeping in mind these other explanations. It was interesting that Managers were the lowest focus in K-12 and also in this study in HE. AI has great potential to collect, cross reference and examine data across large datasets that can allow data to be used for actionable insight. More focus on the use of AI by managers would tap into this potential.

How is AI used in HE

Using grounded coding, the use of AIEd from each of the 138 articles was examined and six major codes emerged from the data. These codes provide insight into how AI was used in HE. The five codes are: (1) Assessment/Evaluation, (2) Predicting, (3) AI Assistant, (4) Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS), and (5) Managing Student Learning. For each of these codes there are also axial codes, which are secondary codes as subcategories from the main category. Each code is delineated below with a figure of the codes with further descriptive information and examples.

Assessment/evaluation

Assessment and Evaluation was the most common use of AIEd in HE. Within this code there were six axial codes broken down into further codes; see Fig.  8 . Automatic assessment was most common, seen in 26 of the studies. It was interesting to see that this involved assessment of academic achievement, but also other factors, such as affect.

figure 8

Codes and axial codes for assessment and evaluation

Automatic assessment was used to support a variety of learners in HE. As well as reducing the time it takes for instructors to grade (Rutner & Scott, 2022 ), automatic grading showed positive use for a variety of students with diverse needs. For example, Zhang and Xu ( 2022 ) used automatic assessment to improve academic writing skills of Uyghur ethnic minority students living in China. Writing has a variety of cultural nuances and in this study the students were shown to engage with the automatic assessment system behaviorally, cognitively, and affectively. This allowed the students to engage in self-regulated learning while improving their writing.

Feedback was a description often used in the studies, as students were given text and/or images as feedback as a formative evaluation. Mousavi et. al. ( 2020 ) developed a system to provide first year biology students with an automated personalized feedback system tailored to the students’ specific demographics, attributes, and academic status. With the unique feature of AIEd being able to analyze multiple data sets involving a variety of different students, AI was used to assess and provide feedback on students’ group work (viz., Ouatik et al., 2021 ).

AI also supports instructors in generating questions and creating multiple question tests (Yang et al., 2021 ). For example, (Lu et al., 2021 ) used natural language processing to create a system that automatically created tests. Following a Turing type test, researchers found that AI technologies can generate highly realistic short-answer questions. The ability for AI to develop multiple questions is a highly valuable affordance as tests can take a great deal of time to make. However, it would be important for instructors to always confirm questions provided by the AI to ensure they are correct and that they match the learning objectives for the class, especially in high value summative assessments.

The axial code within assessment and evaluation revealed that AI was used to review activities in the online space. This included evaluating student’s reflections, achievement goals, community identity, and higher order thinking (viz., Huang et al., 2021 ). Three studies used AIEd to evaluate educational materials. This included general resources and textbooks (viz., Koć‑Januchta et al., 2022 ). It is interesting to see the use of AI for the assessment of educational products, rather than educational artifacts developed by students. While this process may be very similar in nature, this shows researchers thinking beyond the traditional use of AI for assessment to provide other affordances.

Predicting was a common use of AIEd in HE with 21 studies focused specifically on the use of AI for forecasting trends in data. Ten axial codes emerged on the way AI was used to predict different topics, with nine focused on predictions regarding students and the other on predicting the future of higher education. See Fig.  9 .

figure 9

Predicting axial codes

Extant systematic reviews on HE highlighted the use of AIEd for prediction (viz., Chu et al., 2022 ; Hinojo-Lucena et al., 2019 ; Ouyang et al., 2022 ; Zawacki-Richter et al., 2019 ). Ten of the articles in this study used AI for predicting academic performance. Many of the axial codes were often overlapping, such as predicting at risk students, and predicting dropouts; however, each provided distinct affordances. An example of this is the study by Qian et. al. ( 2021 ). These researchers examined students taking a MOOC course. MOOCs can be challenging environments to determine information on individual students with the vast number of students taking the course (Krause & Lowe, 2014 ). However, Qian et al., used AIEd to predict students’ future grades by inputting 17 different learning features, including past grades, into an artificial neural network. The findings were able to predict students’ grades and highlight students at risk of dropping out of the course.

In a systematic review on AIEd within the K-12 context (viz., Crompton et al., 2022 ), prediction was less pronounced in the findings. In the K-12 setting, there was a brief mention of the use of AI in predicting student academic performance. One of the studies mentioned students at risk of dropping out, but this was immediately followed by questions about privacy concerns and describing this as “sensitive”. The use of prediction from the data in this HE systematic review cover a wide range of AI predictive affordances. students Sensitivity is still important in a HE setting, but it is positive to see the valuable insight it provides that can be used to avoid students failing in their goals.

AI assistant

The studies evaluated in this review indicated that the AI Assistant used to support learners had a variety of different names. This code included nomenclature such as, virtual assistant, virtual agent, intelligent agent, intelligent tutor, and intelligent helper. Crompton et. al. ( 2022 ), described the difference in the terms to delineate the way that the AI appeared to the user. For example, if there was an anthropomorphic presence to the AI, such as an avatar, or if the AI appeared to support via other means, such as text prompt. The findings of this systematic review align to Crompton et. al.’s ( 2022 ) descriptive differences of the AI Assistant. Furthermore, this code included studies that provide assistance to students, but may not have specifically used the word assistance. These include the use of chatbots for student outreach, answering questions, and providing other assistance. See Fig.  10 for the axial codes for AI Assistant.

figure 10

AI assistant axial codes

Many of these assistants offered multiple supports to students, such as Alex , the AI described as a virtual change agent in Kim and Bennekin’s ( 2016 ) study. Alex interacted with students in a college mathematics course by asking diagnostic questions and gave support depending on student needs. Alex’s support was organized into four stages: (1) goal initiation (“Want it”), (2) goal formation (“Plan for it”), (3) action control (“Do it”), and (4) emotion control (“Finish it”). Alex provided responses depending on which of these four areas students needed help. These messages supported students with the aim of encouraging persistence in pursuing their studies and degree programs and improving performance.

The role of AI in providing assistance connects back to the seminal work of Vygotsky ( 1978 ) and the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). ZPD highlights the degree to which students can rapidly develop when assisted. Vygotsky described this assistance often in the form of a person. However, with technological advancements, the use of AI assistants in these studies are providing that support for students. The affordances of AI can also ensure that the support is timely without waiting for a person to be available. Also, assistance can consider aspects on students’ academic ability, preferences, and best strategies for supporting. These features were evident in Kim and Bennekin’s ( 2016 ) study using Alex.

Intelligent tutoring system

The use of Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) was revealed in the grounded coding. ITS systems are adaptive instructional systems that involve the use of AI techniques and educational methods. An ITS system customizes educational activities and strategies based on student’s characteristics and needs (Mousavinasab et al., 2021 ). While ITS may be an anticipated finding in AIED HE systematic reviews, it was interesting that extant reviews similar to this study did not always describe their use in HE. For example, Ouyang et. al. ( 2022 ), included “intelligent tutoring system” in search terms describing it as a common technique, yet ITS was not mentioned again in the paper. Zawacki-Richter et. al. ( 2019 ) on the other hand noted that ITS was in the four overarching findings of the use of AIEd in HE. Chu et. al. ( 2022 ) then used Zawacki-Richter’s four uses of AIEd for their recent systematic review.

In this systematic review, 18 studies specifically mentioned that they were using an ITS. The ITS code did not necessitate axial codes as they were performing the same type of function in HE, namely, in providing adaptive instruction to the students. For example, de Chiusole et. al. ( 2020 ) developed Stat-Knowlab, an ITS that provides the level of competence and best learning path for each student. Thus Stat-Knowlab personalizes students’ learning and provides only educational activities that the student is ready to learn. This ITS is able to monitor the evolution of the learning process as the student interacts with the system. In another study, Khalfallah and Slama ( 2018 ) built an ITS called LabTutor for engineering students. LabTutor served as an experienced instructor in enabling students to access and perform experiments on laboratory equipment while adapting to the profile of each student.

The student population in university classes can go into the hundreds and with the advent of MOOCS, class sizes can even go into the thousands. Even in small classes of 20 students, the instructor cannot physically provide immediate unique personalize questions to each student. Instructors need time to read and check answers and then take further time to provide feedback before determining what the next question should be. Working with the instructor, AIEd can provide that immediate instruction, guidance, feedback, and following questioning without delay or becoming tired. This appears to be an effective use of AIEd, especially within the HE context.

Managing student learning

Another code that emerged in the grounded coding was focused on the use of AI for managing student learning. AI is accessed to manage student learning by the administrator or instructor to provide information, organization, and data analysis. The axial codes reveal the trends in the use of AI in managing student learning; see Fig.  11 .

figure 11

Learning analytics was an a priori term often found in studies which describes “the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of data about learners and their contexts, for purposes of understanding and optimizing learning and the environments in which it occurs” (Long & Siemens, 2011 , p. 34). The studies investigated in this systematic review were across grades and subject areas and provided administrators and instructors different types of information to guide their work. One of those studies was conducted by Mavrikis et. al. ( 2019 ) who described learning analytics as teacher assistance tools. In their study, learning analytics were used in an exploratory learning environment with targeted visualizations supporting classroom orchestration. These visualizations, displayed as screenshots in the study, provided information such as the interactions between the students, goals achievements etc. These appear similar to infographics that are brightly colored and draw the eye quickly to pertinent information. AI is also used for other tasks, such as organizing the sequence of curriculum in pacing guides for future groups of students and also designing instruction. Zhang ( 2022 ) described how designing an AI teaching system of talent cultivation and using the digital affordances to establish a quality assurance system for practical teaching, provides new mechanisms for the design of university education systems. In developing such a system, Zhang found that the stability of the instructional design, overcame the drawbacks of traditional manual subjectivity in the instructional design.

Another trend that emerged from the studies was the use of AI to manage student big data to support learning. Ullah and Hafiz ( 2022 ) lament that using traditional methods, including non-AI digital techniques, asking the instructor to pay attention to every student’s learning progress is very difficult and that big data analysis techniques are needed. The ability to look across and within large data sets to inform instruction is a valuable affordance of AIEd in HE. While the use of AIEd to manage student learning emerged from the data, this study uncovered only 19 studies in 7 years (2016–2022) that focused on the use of AIEd to manage student data. This lack of the use was also noted in a recent study in the K-12 space (Crompton et al., 2022 ). In Chu et. al.’s ( 2022 ) study examining the top 50 most cited AIEd articles, they did not report the use of AIEd for managing student data in the top uses of AIEd HE. It would appear that more research should be conducted in this area to fully explore the possibilities of AI.

Gaps and future research

From this systematic review, six gaps emerged in the data providing opportunities for future studies to investigate and provide a fuller understanding of how AIEd can used in HE. (1) The majority of the research was conducted in high income countries revealing a paucity of research in developing countries. More research should be conducted in these developing countries to expand the level of understanding about how AI can enhance learning in under-resourced communities. (2) Almost 50% of the studies were conducted in the areas of language learning, computer science and engineering. Research conducted by members from multiple, different academic departments would help to advance the knowledge of the use of AI in more disciplines. (3) This study revealed that faculty affiliated with schools of education are taking an increasing role in researching the use of AIEd in HE. As this body of knowledge grows, faculty in Schools of Education should share their research regarding the pedagogical affordances of AI so that this knowledge can be applied by faculty across disciplines. (4) The vast majority of the research was conducted at the undergraduate level. More research needs to be done at the graduate student level, as AI provides many opportunities in this environment. (5) Little study was done regarding how AIEd can assist both instructors and managers in their roles in HE. The power of AI to assist both groups further research. (6) Finally, much of the research investigated in this systematic review revealed the use of AIEd in traditional ways that enhance or make more efficient current practices. More research needs to focus on the unexplored affordances of AIEd. As AI becomes more advanced and sophisticated, new opportunities will arise for AIEd. Researchers need to be on the forefront of these possible innovations.

In addition, empirical exploration is needed for new tools, such as ChatGPT that was available for public use at the end of 2022. With the time it takes for a peer review journal article to be published, ChatGPT did not appear in the articles for this study. What is interesting is that it could fit with a variety of the use codes found in this study, with students getting support in writing papers and instructors using Chat GPT to assess students work and with help writing emails or descriptions for students. It would be pertinent for researchers to explore Chat GPT.

Limitations

The findings of this study show a rapid increase in the number of AIEd studies published in HE. However, to ensure a level of credibility, this study only included peer review journal articles. These articles take months to publish. Therefore, conference proceedings and gray literature such as blogs and summaries may reveal further findings not explored in this study. In addition, the articles in this study were all published in English which excluded findings from research published in other languages.

In response to the call by Hinojo-Lucena et. al. ( 2019 ), Chu et. al. ( 2022 ), and Zawacki-Richter et. al. ( 2019 ), this study provides unique findings with an up-to-date examination of the use of AIEd in HE from 2016 to 2022. Past systematic reviews examined the research up to 2020. The findings of this study show that in 2021 and 2022, publications rose nearly two to three times the number of previous years. With this rapid rise in the number of AIEd HE publications, new trends have emerged.

The findings show that of the 138 studies examined, research was conducted in six of the seven continents of the world. In extant systematic reviews showed that the US led by a large margin in the number of studies published. This trend has now shifted to China. Another shift in AIEd HE is that while extant studies lamented the lack of focus on professors of education leading these studies, this systematic review found education to be the most common department affiliation with 28% and computer science coming in second at 20%. Undergraduate students were the most studied students at 72%. Similar to the findings of other studies, language learning was the most common subject domain. This included writing, reading, and vocabulary acquisition. In examination of who the AIEd was intended for, 72% of the studies focused on students, 17% instructors, and 11% managers.

Grounded coding was used to answer the overarching question of how AIEd was used in HE. Five usage codes emerged from the data: (1) Assessment/Evaluation, (2) Predicting, (3) AI Assistant, (4) Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS), and (5) Managing Student Learning. Assessment and evaluation had a wide variety of purposes, including assessing academic progress and student emotions towards learning, individual and group evaluations, and class based online community assessments. Predicting emerged as a code with ten axial codes, as AIEd predicted dropouts and at-risk students, innovative ability, and career decisions. AI Assistants were specific to supporting students in HE. These assistants included those with an anthropomorphic presence, such as virtual agents and persuasive intervention through digital programs. ITS systems were not always noted in extant systematic reviews but were specifically mentioned in 18 of the studies in this review. ITS systems in this study provided customized strategies and approaches to student’s characteristics and needs. The final code in this study highlighted the use of AI in managing student learning, including learning analytics, curriculum sequencing, instructional design, and clustering of students.

The findings of this study provide a springboard for future academics, practitioners, computer scientists, policymakers, and funders in understanding the state of the field in AIEd HE, how AI is used. It also provides actionable items to ameliorate gaps in the current understanding. As the use AIEd will only continue to grow this study can serve as a baseline for further research studies in the use of AIEd in HE.

Availability of data and materials

The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIEd): a high-level academic and industry note 2021

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In the past few decades, technology has completely transformed the world around us. Indeed, experts believe that the next big digital transformation in how we live, communicate, work, trade and learn will be driven by Artificial Intelligence (AI) [ 83 ]. This paper presents a high-level industrial and academic overview of AI in Education (AIEd). It presents the focus of latest research in AIEd on reducing teachers’ workload, contextualized learning for students, revolutionizing assessments and developments in intelligent tutoring systems. It also discusses the ethical dimension of AIEd and the potential impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the future of AIEd’s research and practice. The intended readership of this article is policy makers and institutional leaders who are looking for an introductory state of play in AIEd.

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1 Introduction

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is changing the world around us [ 42 ]. As a term it is difficult to define even for experts because of its interdisciplinary nature and evolving capabilities. In the context of this paper, we define AI as a computer system that can achieve a particular task through certain capabilities (like speech or vision) and intelligent behaviour that was once considered unique to humans [ 54 ]. In more lay terms we use the term AI to refer to intelligent systems that can automate tasks traditionally carried out by humans. Indeed, we read AI within the continuation of the digital age, with increased digital transformation changing the ways in which we live in the world. With such change the skills and knowhow of people must reflect the new reality and within this context, the World Economic Forum identified sixteen skills, referred to as twenty-first century skills necessary for the future workforce [ 79 ]. This includes skills such as technology literacy, communication, leadership, curiosity, adaptability, etc. These skills have always been important for a successful career, however, with the accelerated digital transformation of the past 2 years and the focus on continuous learning in most professional careers, these skills are becoming necessary for learners.

AI will play a very important role in how we teach and learn these new skills. In one dimension, ‘AIEd’ has the potential to dramatically automate and help track the learner’s progress in all these skills and identify where best a human teacher’s assistance is needed. For teachers, AIEd can potentially be used to help identify the most effective teaching methods based on students’ contexts and learning background. It can automate monotonous operational tasks, generate assessments and automate grading and feedback. AI does not only impact what students learn through recommendations, but also how they learn, what are the learning gaps, which pedagogies are more effective and how to retain learner’s attention. In these cases, teachers are the ‘human-in-the-loop’, where in such contexts, the role of AI is only to enable more informed decision making by teachers, by providing them predictions about students' performance or recommending relevant content to students after teachers' approval. Here, the final decision makers are teachers.

Segal et al. [ 58 ] developed a system named SAGLET that utilized ‘human-in-the-loop’ approach to visualize and model students’ activities to teachers in real-time enabling them to intervene more effectively as and when needed. Here the role of AI is to empower the teachers enabling them to enhance students’ learning outcomes. Similarly, Rodriguez et al. [ 52 ] have shown how teachers as ‘human-in-the-loop’ can customize multimodal learning analytics and make them more effective in blended learning environments.

Critically, all these achievements are completely dependent on the quality of available learner data which has been a long-lasting challenge for ed-tech companies, at least until the pandemic. Use of technology in educational institutions around the globe is increasing [ 77 ], however, educational technology (ed-tech) companies building AI powered products have always complained about the lack of relevant data for training algorithms. The advent and spread of Covid in 2019 around the world pushed educational institutions online and left them at the mercy of ed-tech products to organize content, manage operations, and communicate with students. This shift has started generating huge amounts of data for ed-tech companies on which they can build AI systems. According to a joint report: ‘Shock to the System’, published by Educate Ventures and Cambridge University, optimism of ed-tech companies about their own future increased during the pandemic and their most pressing concern became recruitment of too many customers to serve effectively [ 15 ].

Additionally, most of the products and solutions provided by ed-tech start-ups lack the quality and resilience to cope with intensive use of several thousands of users. Product maturity is not ready for huge and intense demand as discussed in Sect. “ Latest research ” below. We also discuss some of these products in detail in Sect. “ Industry’s focus ” below. How do we mitigate the risks of these AI powered products and who monitors the risk? (we return to this theme in our discussion of ethics—Sect. “ Ethical AIEd ”).

This paper is a non-exhaustive overview of AI in Education that presents a brief survey of the latest developments of AI in Education. It begins by discussing different aspects of education and learning where AI is being utilized, then turns to where we see the industry’s current focus and then closes with a note on ethical concerns regarding AI in Education. This paper also briefly evaluates the potential impact of the pandemic on AI’s application in education. The intended readership of this article is the policy community and institutional executives seeking an instructive introduction to the state of play in AIEd. The paper can also be read as a rapid introduction to the state of play of the field.

2 Latest research

Most work within AIEd can be divided into four main subdomains. In this section, we survey some of the latest work in each of these domains as case studies:

Reducing teachers’ workload: the purpose of AI in Education is to reduce teachers’ workload without impacting learning outcomes

Contextualized learning for students: as every learner has unique learning needs, the purpose of AI in Education is to provide customized and/or personalised learning experiences to students based on their contexts and learning backgrounds.

Revolutionizing assessments: the purpose of AI in Education is to enhance our understanding of learners. This not only includes what they know, but also how they learn and which pedagogies work for them.

Intelligent tutoring systems (ITS): the purpose of AI in Education is to provide intelligent learning environments that can interact with students, provide customized feedback and enhance their understanding of certain topics

2.1 Reducing teachers’ workload

Recent research in AIEd is focusing more on teachers than other stakeholders of educational institutions, and this is for the right reasons. Teachers are at the epicenter of every learning environment, face to face or virtual. Participatory design methodologies ensure that teachers are an integral part of the design of new AIEd tools, along with parents and learners [ 45 ]. Reducing teachers’ workload has been a long-lasting challenge for educationists, hoping to achieve more affective teaching in classrooms by empowering the teachers and having them focus more on teaching than the surrounding activities.

With the focus on online education during the pandemic and emergence of new tools to facilitate online learning, there is a growing need for teachers to adapt to these changes. Importantly, teachers themselves are having to re-skill and up-skill to adapt to this age, i.e. the new skills that teachers need to develop to fully utilize the benefits of AIEd [ 39 ]. First, they need to become tech savvy to understand, evaluate and adapt new ed-tech tools as they become available. They may not necessarily use these tools, but it is important to have an understanding of what these tools offer and if they share teachers’ workload. For example, Zoom video calling has been widely used during the pandemic to deliver lessons remotely. Teachers need to know not only how to schedule lessons on Zoom, but also how to utilize functionalities like breakout rooms to conduct group work and Whiteboard for free style writing. Second, teachers will also need to develop analytical skills to interpret the data that are visualized by these ed-tech tools and to identify what kind of data and analytics tools they need to develop a better understanding of learners. This will enable teachers to get what they exactly need from ed-tech companies and ease their workload. Third, teachers will also need to develop new team working, group and management skills to accommodate new tools in their daily routines. They will be responsible for managing these new resources most efficiently.

Selwood and Pilkington [ 61 ] showed that the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) leads to a reduction in teachers’ workload if they use it frequently, receive proper training on how to use ICT and have access to ICT in home and school. During the pandemic, teachers have been left with no options other than online teaching. Spoel et al. [ 76 ] have shown that the previous experience with ICT did not play a significant role in how they dealt with the online transition during pandemic. Suggesting that the new technologies are not a burden for teachers. It is early to draw any conclusions on the long-term effects of the pandemic on education, online learning and teachers’ workload. Use of ICT during the pandemic may not necessarily reduce teacher workload, but change its dynamics.

2.2 Contextualized learning for students

Every learner has unique learning contexts based on their prior knowledge about the topic, social background, economic well-being and emotional state [ 41 ]. Teaching is most effective when tailored to these changing contexts. AIEd can help in identifying the learning gaps in each learner, offer content recommendations based on that and provide step by step solutions to complex problems. For example, iTalk2Learn is an opensource platform that was developed by researchers to support math learning among students between 5 and 11 years of age [ 22 ]. This tutor interacted with students through speech, identified when students were struggling with fractions and intervened accordingly. Similarly, Pearson has launched a calculus learning tool called AIDA that provides step by step guidance to students and helps them complete calculus tasks. Use of such tools by young students also raises interesting questions about the illusion of empathy that learners may develop towards such educational bots [ 73 ].

Open Learner Models [ 12 , 18 ] have been widely used in AIEd to facilitate learners, teachers and parents in understanding what learners know, how they learn and how AI is being used to enhance learning. Another important construct in understanding learners is self-regulated learning [ 10 , 68 ]. Zimmerman and Schunk [ 85 ] define self-regulated learning as learner’s thoughts, feelings and actions towards achieving a certain goal. Better understanding of learners through open learner models and self-regulated learning is the first step towards contextualized learning in AIEd. Currently, we do not have completely autonomous digital tutors like Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri for education but domain specific Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) are also very helpful in identifying how much students know, where they need help and what type of pedagogies would work for them.

There are a number of ed-tech tools available to develop basic literacy skills in learners like double digit division or improving English grammar. In future, AIEd powered tools will move beyond basic literacy to develop twenty-first century skills like curiosity [ 49 ], initiative and creativity [ 51 ], collaboration and adaptability [ 36 ].

2.3 Revolutionizing assessments

Assessment in educational context refers to ‘any appraisal (or judgement or evaluation) of a student’s work or performance’ [ 56 ]. Hill and Barber [ 27 ] have identified assessments as one of the three pillars of schooling along with curriculum and learning and teaching. The purpose of modern assessments is to evaluate what students know, understand and can do. Ideally, assessments should take account of the full range of student abilities and provide useful information about learning outcomes. However, every learner is unique and so are their learning paths. How can standardized assessment be used to evaluate every student, with distinct capabilities, passions and expertise is a question that can be posed to broader notions of educational assessment. According to Luckin [ 37 ] from University College London, ‘AI would provide a fairer, richer assessment system that would evaluate students across a longer period of time and from an evidence-based, value-added perspective’.

AIAssess is an example of an intelligent assessment tool that was developed by researchers at UCL Knowledge lab [ 38 , 43 ]. It assessed students learning math and science based on three models: knowledge model, analytics model and student model. Knowledge component stored the knowledge about each topic, the analytics component analyzed students’ interactions and the student model tracked students’ progress on a particular topic. Similarly, Samarakou et al. [ 57 ] have developed an AI assessment tool that also does qualitative evaluation of students to reduce the workload of instructors who would otherwise spend hours evaluating every exercise. Such tools can be further empowered by machine learning techniques such as semantic analysis, voice recognition, natural language processing and reinforcement learning to improve the quality of assessments.

2.4 Intelligent tutoring systems (ITS)

An intelligent tutoring system is a computer program that tries to mimic a human teacher to provide personalized learning to students [ 46 , 55 ]. The concept of ITS in AIEd is decades old [ 9 ]. There have always been huge expectations from ITS capabilities to support learning. Over the years, we have observed that there has been a significant contrast between what ITS were envisioned to deliver and what they have actually been capable of doing [ 4 ].

A unique combination of domain models [ 78 ], pedagogical models [ 44 ] and learner models [ 20 ] were expected to provide contextualized learning experiences to students with customized content, like expert human teachers [ 26 , 59 , 65 ],. Later, more models were introduced to enhance students' learning experience like strategy model, knowledge-base model and communication model [ 7 ]. It was expected that an intelligent tutoring system would not just teach, but also ensure that students have learned. It would care for students [ 17 ]. Similar to human teachers, ITS would improve with time. They would learn from their experiences, ‘understand’ what works in which contexts and then help students accordingly [ 8 , 60 ].

In recent years, ITS have mostly been subject and topic specific like ASSISTments [ 25 ], iTalk2Learn [ 23 ] and Aida Calculus. Despite being limited in terms of the domain that a particular intelligent tutoring system addresses, they have proven to be effective in providing relevant content to students, interacting with students [ 6 ] and improving students’ academic performance [ 18 , 41 ]. It is not necessary that ITS would work in every context and facilitate every teacher [ 7 , 13 , 46 , 48 ]. Utterberg et al. [78] showed why teachers have abandoned technology in some instances because it was counterproductive. They conducted a formative intervention with sixteen secondary school mathematics teachers and found systemic contradictions between teachers’ opinions and ITS recommendations, eventually leading to the abandonment of the tool. This highlights the importance of giving teachers the right to refuse AI powered ed-tech if they are not comfortable with it.

Considering a direct correlation between emotions and learning [ 40 ] recently, ITS have also started focusing on emotional state of students while learning to offer a more contextualized learning experience [ 24 ].

2.5 Popular conferences

To reflect on the increasing interest and activity in the space of AIEd, some of the most popular conferences in AIEd are shown in Table 1 below. Due to the pandemic all these conferences will be available virtually in 2021 as well. The first international workshop on multimodal artificial intelligence in education is being organized at AIEd [74] conference to promote the importance of multimodal data in AIEd.

3 Industry’s focus

In this section, we introduce the industry focus in the area of AIEd by case-studying three levels of companies start-up level, established/large company and mega-players (Amazon, Cisco). These companies represent different levels of the ecosystem (in terms of size).

3.1 Start-ups

There have been a number of ed-tech companies that are leading the AIEd revolution. New funds are also emerging to invest in ed-tech companies and to help ed-tech start-ups in scaling their products. There has been an increase in investor interest [ 21 ]. In 2020 the amount of investment raised by ed-tech companies more than doubled compared to 2019 (according to Techcrunch). This shows another dimension of pandemic’s effect on ed-tech. With an increase in data coming in during the pandemic, it is expected that industry’s focus on AI powered products will increase.

EDUCATE, a leading accelerator focused on ed-tech companies supported by UCL Institute of Education and European Regional Development Fund was formed to bring research and evidence at the centre of product development for ed-tech. This accelerator has supported more than 250 ed-tech companies and 400 entrepreneurs and helped them focus on evidence-informed product development for education.

Number of ed-tech companies are emerging in this space with interesting business models. Third Space Learning offers maths intervention programs for primary and secondary school students. The company aims to provide low-cost quality tuition to support pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds in UK state schools. They have already offered 8,00,000 h of teaching to around 70,000 students, 50% of who were eligible for free meals. Number of mobile apps like Kaizen Languages, Duolingo and Babbel have emerged that help individuals in learning other languages.

3.2 Established players

Pearson is one of the leading educational companies in the world with operations in more than 70 countries and more than 22,000 employees worldwide. They have been making a transition to digital learning and currently generate 66% of their annual revenue from it. According to Pearson, they have built world’s first AI powered calculus tutor called Aida which is publicly available on the App Store. But, its effectiveness in improving students’ calculus skills without any human intervention is still to be seen.

India based ed-tech company known for creating engaging educational content for students raised investment at a ten billion dollar valuation last year [ 70 ]. Century tech is another ed-tech company that is empowering learning through AI. They claim to use neuroscience, learning science and AI to personalize learning and identifying the unique learning pathways for students in 25 countries. They make more than sixty thousand AI powered smart recommendations to learners every day.

Companies like Pearson and Century Tech are building great technology that is impacting learners across the globe. But the usefulness of their acclaimed AI in helping learners from diverse backgrounds, with unique learning needs and completely different contexts is to be proven. As discussed above, teachers play a very important role on how their AI is used by learners. For this, teacher training is vital to fully understand the strengths and weaknesses of these products. It is very important to have an awareness of where these AI products cannot help or can go wrong so teachers and learners know when to avoid relying on them.

In the past few years, the popularity of Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCS) has grown exponentially with the emergence of platforms like Coursera, Udemy, Udacity, LinkedIn Learning and edX [ 5 , 16 , 28 ]. AI can be utilized to develop a better understanding of learner behaviour on MOOCS, produce better content and enhance learning outcomes at scale. Considering these platforms are collecting huge amounts of data, it will be interesting to see the future applications of AI in offering personalized learning and life-long learning solutions to their users [ 81 ].

3.3 Mega-players

Seeing the business potential of AIEd and the kind of impact it can have on the future of humanity, some of the biggest tech companies around the globe are moving into this space. The shift to online education during the pandemic boosted the demand for cloud services. Amazon’s AWS (Amazon Web Services) as a leader in cloud services provider facilitated institutions like Instituto Colombiano para la Evaluacion de la Educacion (ICFES) to scale their online examination service for 70,000 students. Similarly, LSE utilized AWS to scale their online assessments for 2000 students [ 1 , 3 ].

Google’s CEO Sunder Pichai stated that the pandemic offered an incredible opportunity to re-imagine education. Google has launched more than 50 new software tools during the pandemic to facilitate remote learning. Google Classroom which is a part of Google Apps for Education (GAFE) is being widely used by schools around the globe to deliver education. Research shows that it improves class dynamics and helps with learner participation [ 2 , 29 , 62 , 63 , 69 ].

Before moving onto the ethical dimensions of AIEd, it is important to conclude this section by noting an area that is of critical importance to processing industry and services. Aside from these three levels of operation (start-up, medium, and mega companies), there is the question of development of the AIEd infrastructure. As Luckin [41] points out, “True progress will require the development of an AIEd infrastructure. This will not, however, be a single monolithic AIEd system. Instead, it will resemble the marketplace that has been developed for smartphone apps: hundreds and then thousands of individual AIEd components, developed in collaboration with educators, conformed to uniform international data standards, and shared with researchers and developers worldwide. These standards will enable system-level data collation and analysis that help us learn much more about learning itself and how to improve it”.

4 Ethical AIEd

With a number of mishaps in the real world [ 31 , 80 ], ethics in AI has become a real concern for AI researchers and practitioners alike. Within computer science, there is a growing overlap with the broader Digital Ethics [ 19 ] and the ethics and engineering focused on developing Trustworthy AI [ 11 ]. There is a focus on fairness, accountability, transparency and explainability [ 33 , 82 , 83 , 84 ]. Ethics in AI needs to be embedded in the entire development pipeline, from the decision to start collecting data till the point when the machine learning model is deployed in production. From an engineering perspective, Koshiyama et al. [ 35 ] have identified four verticals of algorithmic auditing. These include performance and robustness, bias and discrimination, interpretability and explainability and algorithmic privacy.

In education, ethical AI is crucial to ensure the wellbeing of learners, teachers and other stakeholders involved. There is a lot of work going on in AIEd and AI powered ed-tech tools. With the influx of large amounts of data due to online learning during the pandemic, we will most likely see an increasing number of AI powered ed-tech products. But ethics in AIEd is not a priority for most ed-tech companies and schools. One of the reasons for this is the lack of awareness of relevant stakeholders regarding where AI can go wrong in the context of education. This means that the drawbacks of using AI like discrimination against certain groups due to data deficiencies, stigmatization due to reliance on certain machine learning modelling deficiencies and exploitation of personal data due to lack of awareness can go unnoticed without any accountability.

An AI wrongly predicting that a particular student will not perform very well in end of year exams or might drop out next year can play a very important role in determining that student’s reputation in front of teachers and parents. This reputation will determine how these teachers and parents treat that learner, resulting in a huge psychological impact on that learner, based on this wrong description by an AI tool. One high-profile case of harm was in the use of an algorithm to predict university entry results for students unable to take exams due to the pandemic. The system was shown to be biased against students from poorer backgrounds. Like other sectors where AI is making a huge impact, in AIEd this raises an important ethical question regarding giving students the freedom to opt out of AI powered predictions and automated evaluations.

The ethical implications of AI in education are dependent on the kind of disruption AI is doing in the ed-tech sector. On the one hand, this can be at an individual level for example by recommending wrong learning materials to students, or it can collectively impact relationships between different stakeholders such as how teachers perceive learners’ progress. This can also lead to automation bias and issues of accountability [ 67 ] where teachers begin to blindly rely on AI tools and prefer the tool’s outcomes over their own better judgement, whenever there is a conflict.

Initiatives have been observed in this space. For example, Professor Rose Luckin, professor of learner centered design at University College London along with Sir Anthony Seldon, vice chancellor of the University of Buckingham and Priya Lakhani, founder and CEO of Century Tech founded the Institute of Ethical AI in Education (IEAIEd) [ 72 ] to create awareness and promote the ethical aspects of AI in education. In its interim report, the institute identified seven different requirements for ethical AI to mitigate any kind of risks for learners. This included human agency and oversight to double-check AI’s performance, technical robustness and safety to prevent AI going wrong with new data or being hacked; diversity to ensure similar distribution of different demographics in data and avoid bias; non-discrimination and fairness to prevent anyone from being unfairly treated by AI; privacy and data governance to ensure everyone has the right to control their data; transparency to enhance the understanding of AI products; societal and environmental well-being to ensure that AI is not causing any harm and accountability to ensure that someone takes the responsibility for any wrongdoings of AI. Recently, the institute has also published a framework [ 71 ] for educators, schools and ed-tech companies to help them with the selection of ed-tech products with various ethical considerations in mind, like ethical design, transparency, privacy etc.

With the focus on online learning during the pandemic, and more utilization of AI powered ed-tech tools, risks of AI going wrong have increased significantly for all the stakeholders including ed-tech companies, schools, teachers and learners. A lot more work needs to be done on ethical AI in learning contexts to mitigate these risks, including assessment balancing risks and opportunities.

UNESCO published ‘Beijing Consensus’ on AI and Education that recommended member states to take a number of actions for the smooth and positively impactful integration of AI with education [ 74 ]. International bodies like EU have also recently published a set of draft guidelines under the heading of EU AI Act to ban certain uses of AI and categorize some as ‘high risk’ [ 47 ].

5 Future work

With the focus on online education due to Covid’19 in the past year, it will be consequential to see what AI has to offer for education with vast amounts of data being collected online through Learning Management Systems (LMS) and Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCS).

With this influx of educational data, AI techniques such as reinforcement learning can also be utilized to empower ed-tech. Such algorithms perform best with the large amounts of data that was limited to very few ed-tech companies in 2021. These algorithms have achieved breakthrough performance in multiple domains including games [ 66 ], healthcare [ 14 ] and robotics [ 34 ]. This presents a great opportunity for AI’s applications in education for further enhancing students’ learning outcomes, reducing teachers’ workloads [ 30 ] and making learning personalized [ 64 ], interactive and fun [ 50 , 53 ] for teachers and students.

With a growing number of AI powered ed-tech products in future, there will also be a lot of research on ethical AIEd. The risks of AI going wrong in education and the psychological impact this can have on learners and teachers is huge. Hence, more work needs to be done to ensure robust and safe AI products for all the stakeholders.

This can begin from the ed-tech companies sharing detailed guidelines for using AI powered ed-tech products, particularly specifying when not to rely on them. This includes the detailed documentation of the entire machine learning development pipeline with the assumptions made, data processing approaches used and the processes followed for selecting machine learning models. Regulators can play a very important role in ensuring that certain ethical principles are followed in developing these AI products or there are certain minimum performance thresholds that these products achieve [ 32 ].

6 Conclusion

AIEd promised a lot in its infancy around 3 decades back. However, there are still a number of AI breakthroughs required to see that kind of disruption in education at scale (including basic infrastructure). In the end, the goal of AIEd is not to promote AI, but to support education. In essence, there is only one way to evaluate the impact of AI in Education: through learning outcomes. AIEd for reducing teachers’ workload is a lot more impactful if the reduced workload enables teachers to focus on students’ learning, leading to better learning outcomes.

Cutting edge AI by researchers and companies around the world is not of much use if it is not helping the primary grade student in learning. This problem becomes extremely challenging because every learner is unique with different learning pathways. With the recent developments in AI, particularly reinforcement learning techniques, the future holds exciting possibilities of where AI will take education. For impactful AI in education, learners and teachers always need to be at the epicenter of AI development.

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Chaudhry, M.A., Kazim, E. Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIEd): a high-level academic and industry note 2021. AI Ethics 2 , 157–165 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43681-021-00074-z

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How can artificial intelligence enhance education?

artificial intelligence and education essay

The transformative power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) cuts across all economic and social sectors, including education .

“Education will be profoundly transformed by AI,” says UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay. “Teaching tools, ways of learning, access to knowledge, and teacher training will be revolutionized.”

AI has the potential to accelerate the process of achieving the global education goals through reducing barriers to access learning, automating management processes, and optimizing methods in order to improve learning outcomes.  

This is why UNESCO’s upcoming Mobile Learning Week (4-8 March 2019) will focus on AI and its implications for sustainable development. Held annually at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, the 5-day event offers an exciting mix of high-level plenaries, workshops and hands-on demonstrations. Some 1200 participants have already registered for the event that provides the educational community, governments and other stakeholders a unique opportunity to discuss the opportunities and threats of AI in the area of education.

The discussions will evolve around four key issues:

  • Ensure inclusive and equitable use of AI in education – including actions on how to address inequalities related to socio-economic status, gender, ethnicity and geographic location; identify successful projects or proved-effective AI solutions to break through barriers for vulnerable groups to access quality education.
  • Leverage AI to enhance education and learning – improve education management systems, AI-boosted learning management systems or other AI in education applications, and identify new forms of personalized learning that can support teachers and tackle education challenges.
  • Promote skills development for jobs and life in the AI era – support the design of local, regional and international strategies and policies, consider the readiness of policymakers and other education leaders and stakeholders; and explore how AI-powered mobile technology tools can support skills development and innovation.
  • Safeguard transparent and auditable use of education data – analyze how to mitigate the risks and perils of AI in education; identify and promote sound evidence for policy formulation guaranteeing accountability, and adopt algorithms that are transparent and explainable to education stakeholders.

During Mobile Learning Week , UNESCO is organizing a Global Conference on AI (Monday 4 March) to raise awareness and promote reflection on the opportunities and challenges that AI and its correlated technologies pose, notably in the area of transparency and accountability. The conference, entitled “AI with Human Values for Sustainable Development” will also explore the potential of AI in relation to the SDGs.

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Artificial Intelligence Essay for Students and Children

500+ words essay on artificial intelligence.

Artificial Intelligence refers to the intelligence of machines. This is in contrast to the natural intelligence of humans and animals. With Artificial Intelligence, machines perform functions such as learning, planning, reasoning and problem-solving. Most noteworthy, Artificial Intelligence is the simulation of human intelligence by machines. It is probably the fastest-growing development in the World of technology and innovation . Furthermore, many experts believe AI could solve major challenges and crisis situations.

Artificial Intelligence Essay

Types of Artificial Intelligence

First of all, the categorization of Artificial Intelligence is into four types. Arend Hintze came up with this categorization. The categories are as follows:

Type 1: Reactive machines – These machines can react to situations. A famous example can be Deep Blue, the IBM chess program. Most noteworthy, the chess program won against Garry Kasparov , the popular chess legend. Furthermore, such machines lack memory. These machines certainly cannot use past experiences to inform future ones. It analyses all possible alternatives and chooses the best one.

Type 2: Limited memory – These AI systems are capable of using past experiences to inform future ones. A good example can be self-driving cars. Such cars have decision making systems . The car makes actions like changing lanes. Most noteworthy, these actions come from observations. There is no permanent storage of these observations.

Type 3: Theory of mind – This refers to understand others. Above all, this means to understand that others have their beliefs, intentions, desires, and opinions. However, this type of AI does not exist yet.

Type 4: Self-awareness – This is the highest and most sophisticated level of Artificial Intelligence. Such systems have a sense of self. Furthermore, they have awareness, consciousness, and emotions. Obviously, such type of technology does not yet exist. This technology would certainly be a revolution .

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Applications of Artificial Intelligence

First of all, AI has significant use in healthcare. Companies are trying to develop technologies for quick diagnosis. Artificial Intelligence would efficiently operate on patients without human supervision. Such technological surgeries are already taking place. Another excellent healthcare technology is IBM Watson.

Artificial Intelligence in business would significantly save time and effort. There is an application of robotic automation to human business tasks. Furthermore, Machine learning algorithms help in better serving customers. Chatbots provide immediate response and service to customers.

artificial intelligence and education essay

AI can greatly increase the rate of work in manufacturing. Manufacture of a huge number of products can take place with AI. Furthermore, the entire production process can take place without human intervention. Hence, a lot of time and effort is saved.

Artificial Intelligence has applications in various other fields. These fields can be military , law , video games , government, finance, automotive, audit, art, etc. Hence, it’s clear that AI has a massive amount of different applications.

To sum it up, Artificial Intelligence looks all set to be the future of the World. Experts believe AI would certainly become a part and parcel of human life soon. AI would completely change the way we view our World. With Artificial Intelligence, the future seems intriguing and exciting.

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Artificial Intelligence Essay in 100, 200, and 300 Words for School Students

artificial intelligence and education essay

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  • Jun 6, 2024

Essay On Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has revolutionized every economic sector in the 21st century with its capacity to create efficient machines possessing cognitive abilities. Key components of this technological advancement, such as machine learning (ML), deep learning, and natural language processing (NLP), have enabled the development of machines that utilize data and algorithms to perform tasks akin to those performed by humans. To delve deeper into the world of AI, you can explore three insightful essays on Artificial Intelligence available in this blog. Keep browsing.

Table of Contents

  • 1 Artificial Intelligence Essay in 100 Words for School Students
  • 2 Artificial Intelligence Essay in 200 Words for School Students
  • 3 Artificial Intelligence Essay in 300 Words for School Students
  • 4 Short Essay on Artificial Intelligence

Also Read: Types of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence Essay in 100 Words for School Students

Artificial Intelligence or AI is a revolutionary technology that allows machines to undertake tasks that usually need human intelligence. It includes natural language processing (NLP), problem-solving capabilities, and machine learning (ML). In contemporary times, AI technology has entered all aspects of human life. Currently, AI technology is present in virtual assistants like Siri to advanced applications in the finance, industrial, and healthcare sectors.

Even though AI presents extensive potential for innovation and efficiency, it has adverse effects like ethical concerns and job displacement. Therefore, it is important that we use AI technology in a controlled manner and always aspire for the wholesome development of human civilization. 

Also Read: Career in Artificial Intelligence: Opportunities & Outlook

Artificial Intelligence Essay in 200 Words for School Students

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an evolving technology in the field of computer science. This technology aims to curate machines capable of reasoning, learning, and problem-solving by mimicking human cognitive functions. This technology allows computer and machine systems to adapt and improve performance without explicit programming using machine learning (ML), a subset of AI. Furthermore, AI technology is used in streaming platforms, autonomous vehicles, and advanced medical diagnostics. Due to its widespread usage, AI has become an integral part of the modern society.

However, the rapid development of AI technology often raises ethical concerns, especially about data privacy and security. Also, advancements in this latest technology have the potential to increase unemployment across various sectors. Thus, it is essential to strike a balance between innovation and protection of human elements and interests in the job sector and personal life. 

Therefore, as we adopt AI in our daily lives, it becomes our responsibility to generate awareness about crucial elements of AI and its impact on human civilization. On top of that, it is significant to mankind that technology should always adhere to the ethical guidelines of data privacy and cyber security. Also, federal and state governments must implement laws that prevent AI developers from threatening social harmony and national security within and beyond the nation’s territorial boundaries. 

Also Read: Top AI Courses after 12th with Salaries

Also Read: How to Prepare for UPSC in 6 Months?

Artificial Intelligence Essay in 300 Words for School Students

The advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an attempt to converge computer science, mathematics, and cognitive science into singular units to create machines with human intelligence. These machines help in learning, reasoning, problem-solving, and language understanding. Owing to the varied tasks performed by AI-enabled machines, AI technology has become a landmark element of the technological revolution of the 21st century. 

AI technology has transformed the fields of healthcare, finance, automobile, and streaming services. In healthcare, AI is used for drug discovery and diagnosis. Whereas, in the financial sector, AI is used for risk management and optimization of trading strategies. On top of that, this technology has led to the development of AI-powered vehicles, which promise efficient and safe transportation. Furthermore, AI is used in recommendation systems on platforms like Netflix and Amazon to provide personalized suggestions based on the behavior and preferences of users. 

However, exemplary technological advancements always come with numerous drawbacks. One of the grave consequences of the large-scale adoption of AI is the fear of job loss. In recent times, automation has left many jobless, especially in the manufacturing sector. Thus, governments and technology companies must ensure that there should be a balanced discussion between technological advancements and societal well-being. Also, policymakers must have regular dialogue with ethicists to control the exploitation of citizen’s data by technology companies. 

Nevertheless, AI has opened exciting opportunities for inquisitive minds as it has created exciting jobs in coding, data science, and robotics. Owing to the increased use of AI technology in these arenas, people have the opportunity to improve their critical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving skills. To leverage new opportunities like these, students should start gaining hands-on experience with AI technologies at an early age. 

Thus, Artificial Intelligence is a revolutionary force that will shape the future of mankind. To harness the maximum benefits of this technology, it is advisable to use it wisely. Any development or innovation in AI technology must be directed towards the betterment of society and aim to protect the privacy of the weakest section of society. 

Also Read: Applications of Artificial Intelligence

Short Essay on Artificial Intelligence

Also Read: Speech on AI in English for School Students: Check Samples

Ans: AI is a branch of technology and computer science that empowers machines to perform tasks that require human intelligence. AI systems or AI-enabled machines use data and algorithms to learn, reason, and solve problems. It is widely used for speech recognition, autonomous vehicles, image processing, and disease diagnosis.

Ans: Machine learning (ML), natural language processing (NLP), deep learning, algorithms, and problem-solving are some of the essential AI elements. 

Ans: You can start by defining Artificial Intelligence. Then you can highlight its application in different fields. Thereafter, you can highlight the ethical concerns around this technology. Finally, you can conclude by weighing in on the future implications of this technological advancement. 

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Ankita is a history enthusiast with a few years of experience in academic writing. Her love for literature and history helps her curate engaging and informative content for education blog. When not writing, she finds peace in analysing historical and political anectodes.

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  • Department for Education

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) in education

Updated 26 October 2023

Applies to England

artificial intelligence and education essay

© Crown copyright 2023

This publication is licensed under the terms of the Open Government Licence v3.0 except where otherwise stated. To view this licence, visit nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3 or write to the Information Policy Team, The National Archives, Kew, London TW9 4DU, or email: [email protected] .

Where we have identified any third party copyright information you will need to obtain permission from the copyright holders concerned.

This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/generative-artificial-intelligence-in-education/generative-artificial-intelligence-ai-in-education

This document sets out the position of the Department for Education ( DfE ) on the use of generative artificial intelligence ( AI ), including large language models ( LLMs ) like ChatGPT or Google Bard, in the education sector.

This statement:

  • is informed by the government’s white paper on a pro-innovation approach to AI regulation
  • follows the government’s announcement to set up an expert Frontier AI Taskforce to help the UK adopt the next generation of safe AI

Understanding generative AI

Generative AI refers to technology that can be used to create new content based on large volumes of data that models have been trained on from a variety of works and other sources. ChatGPT and Google Bard are generative artificial intelligence ( AI ) tools built on large language models ( LLMs ).

Tools such as ChatGPT and Google Bard can:

  • answer questions
  • complete written tasks
  • respond to prompts in a human-like way

Other forms of generative AI can produce:

  • simulations

AI technology is not new and we already use it in everyday life for:

  • email spam filtering
  • media recommendation systems
  • navigation apps
  • online chatbots

However, recent advances in technology mean that we can now use tools such as ChatGPT and Google Bard to produce AI -generated content. This creates opportunities and challenges for the education sector.

Opportunities for the education sector

Generative AI tools are good at quickly:

  • analysing, structuring, and writing text
  • turning prompts into audio, video and images

When used appropriately, generative AI has the potential to:

  • reduce workload across the education sector
  • free up teachers’ time, allowing them to focus on delivering excellent teaching

However, the content produced by generative AI could be:

  • inappropriate
  • taken out of context and without permission
  • out of date or unreliable

Using AI effectively

Teacher workload is an important issue and we are committed to helping teachers spend less time on non-pupil facing activities.

We are working with the education sector and with experts to identify opportunities to improve education and reduce workload using generative AI .

Having access to generative AI is not a substitute for having knowledge in our long-term memory. To make the most of generative AI , we need to have the knowledge to draw on.

We can only:

  • learn how to write good prompts if we can write clearly and understand the domain we are asking about
  • sense-check the results if we have a schema against which to compare them

Generative AI tools can make certain written tasks quicker and easier, but cannot replace the judgement and deep subject knowledge of a human expert. It is more important than ever that our education system ensures pupils acquire knowledge, expertise and intellectual capability.

The education sector should:

  • make the most of the opportunities that technology provides
  • use technology safely and effectively to deliver excellent education that prepares pupils to contribute to society and the future workplace

The limitations of generative AI tools

Generative AI tools can produce unreliable information, therefore any content produced requires professional judgement to check for appropriateness and accuracy.

Generative AI :

  • returns results based on the dataset it has been trained on – for example, a generative AI tool may not have been trained on the English curriculum
  • may not provide results that are comparable with a human-designed resource developed in the context of our curriculum

Whatever tools or resources are used to produce plans, policies or documents, the quality and content of the final document remains the professional responsibility of the person who produced it and the organisation they belong to.

Schools and colleges may wish to review homework policies and other types of unsupervised study to account for the availability of generative AI .

Higher education institutions may wish to review the intellectual asset management guide in regards to developing student policies on the IP they create, and how they interact and use IP of others in light of generative AI use.

Protecting data, pupils and staff

  • stores and learns from the data it is given – any data entered should not be identifiable
  • can create believable content, including more credible scam emails requesting payment – people interact with generative AI differently and the content may seem more authoritative and believable

Schools and colleges should:

  • protect personal and special category data in accordance with data protection legislation
  • not allow or cause intellectual property, including pupils’ work, to be used to train generative AI models, without appropriate consent or exemption to copyright
  • review and strengthen their cyber security by referring to the cyber standards   – generative AI could increase the sophistication and credibility of attacks
  • what they need to do to protect pupils and students online
  • how they can limit children’s exposure to risks from the school’s or college’s IT system
  • refer to the  filtering and monitoring standard  to make sure they have the appropriate systems in place

Find out more on:

  • ChatGPT and LLMs : what’s the risk
  • the principles for the security of machine learning

Data privacy

It is important to be aware of the data privacy implications when using generative AI tools, as is the case with any new technology. Personal and special category data must be protected in accordance with data protection legislation.

If it is strictly necessary to use personal and special category data in generative AI tools within their setting, the education institution must ensure that the products and procedures comply with data protection legislation and their existing data privacy policies to protect the data.

Education institutions should also be open and transparent, ensuring the data subjects (pupils) understand their personal or special category data is being processed using AI tools.

Find out more about:

  • personal data
  • special category data

Intellectual property

Most generative tools will use the inputs submitted by users to further train and refine their models. 

However, pupils own the intellectual property ( IP ) rights to original content they create. Original content is likely to include anything that shows working out or is beyond multiple choice questions. Intellectual property can only be used to train AI if there is consent from the rights holder or an exemption to copyright applies.

Some tools allow users to opt out of inputs being used to train the models.

Education institutions must not allow or cause pupils’ original work to be used to train generative AI models unless they have appropriate consent or exemption to copyright. Consent would need to be from the student if over 18, and from their parent or legal guardian if under 18. 

Exemptions to copyright are limited, and education institutions may wish to take legal advice to ensure they are acting within the law.

Formal assessments

Schools, colleges, universities and awarding organisations need to continue to take reasonable steps where applicable to prevent malpractice involving the use of generative AI .

The Joint Council for Qualifications has published guidance on AI use in assessments to support teachers and exam centres in protecting the integrity of qualifications. This guidance includes information on:

  • what counts as AI misuse
  • the requirements for teachers and exam centres to help prevent and detect malpractice

Knowledge and skills for the future

To harness the potential of generative AI , students will benefit from a knowledge-rich curriculum which allows them to become well-informed users of technology and understand its impact on society. Strong foundational knowledge ensures students are developing the right skills to make best use of generative AI .

The education sector needs to:

  • prepare students for changing workplaces
  • teach students how to use emerging technologies, such as generative AI , safely and appropriately

At different stages of education, this teaching may include:

  • the limitations, reliability, and potential bias of generative AI
  • how information on the internet is organised and ranked
  • online safety to protect against harmful or misleading content
  • understanding and protecting IP rights
  • creating and using digital content safely and responsibly
  • the impact of technology, including disruptive and enabling technologies
  • foundational knowledge about how computers work, connect with each other, follow rules and process data

The Office for AI is currently conducting research into the skills that will be needed for future workforce training.

The education system should:

  • support students, particularly young pupils, to identify and use appropriate resources to support their ongoing education
  • encourage effective use of age-appropriate resources (which, in some instances, may include generative AI )
  • prevent over-reliance on a limited number of tools or resources

DfE will continue to work with experts to:

  • consider and respond to the implications of generative AI and other emerging technologies
  • support primary and secondary schools to teach a knowledge-rich computing curriculum to children up to the age of 16

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As Artificial Intelligence (AI) changes how businesses work, there is a growing need for people who can work in this sector. This paper investigates how well universities in United Kingdom offering courses in AI, prepare students for jobs in the real world. To gain insight into the differences between university curricula and industry demands we review the contents of taught courses and job advertisement portals. By using custom data scraping tools to gather information from job advertisements and university curricula, and frequency and Naive Bayes classifier analysis, this study will show exactly what skills industry is looking for. In this study we identified 12 skill categories that were used for mapping. The study showed that the university curriculum in the AI domain is well balanced in most technical skills, including Programming and Machine learning subjects, but have a gap in Data Science and Maths and Statistics skill categories.

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Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning

artificial intelligence and education essay

ChatGPT and Artificial Intelligence: A Lesson on Assessment Design and Talking with Students about Academic Integrity

Like many schools, we have spent much time facilitating discussions about academic integrity , or preventing and addressing various forms of cheating. While cheating has always been a part of formal education, it is hard to not get swept up in the ways technological advances increase these challenges. The current focus is on ChatGPT , an AI-powered chatbot that generates written text based on your prompts, from asking it questions to requesting it write an essay, lesson plan, or company statement. A websearch about ChatGPT will yield stories such as ChatGPT an MBA exam .

This teaching tip introduces how artificial intelligence, specifically ChatGPT, may change the way students engage with writing-based assessments and encourages all of us to explore it and design activities accordingly. 

See how ChatGPT completes a course activity. 

To get an idea of how this tool treats your writing assignments, enter your assignments’ directions into the ChatGPT bot to see what results it produces. If the results seem “passable” for the assignment, tweak the prompt or assignment description until ChatGPT produces a low quality result (illogical, too vague, etc.). Such tweaks might include:

  • Referring to specific evidence via course texts, citations, and examples
  • Applying the issue to a personal or local situation

Christina’s Example

I entered our writing department’s first-week writing prompt, which is meant to give instructors an early sense of students’ writing skills in case they may benefit from extra available support. The prompt presents a common societal issue, examples of different perspectives, and then asks the writer to explain their perspective, all in 450-600 words. Each time I regenerated a response (i.e. pressed the button for the AI to try it again), the response got longer, with the fourth time reaching 255 well-written, on-topic words. To the prompt’s credit, the AI response did not refer to the specific evidence presented. See my ChatGPT Simulation of WRT 1060 Prompt for the full examples. (OU Writing and Rhetoric professor Crystal VanKooten offers a link to more bot-produced essays below.)

Keep assigning writing, and build in space for assessing process.

While tech tools get more sophisticated and powerful, these issues have been around for decades. Even before widely available internet access, a student could always hire someone to do their writing assignments. Assessing students’ process can deter cheating by having students show you their work. This could be done through students submitting prewriting, reading notes, reflection, and works-in-progress. They could also meet with you to discuss their ideas. These don’t necessarily have to be closely reviewed or evaluated, but could be given credit as done/not done. I offer some of these potential checkpoints in Plagiarize-Proof Your Writing Assignments .

Make the writing multimodal.

In the guide Short-term Suggestions for AI Issues Cynthia Alby, education professor and author of Learning That Matters , suggests using “performance tasks” such as speeches, interviews, diagrams, peer instruction, and storyboards. Even if you teach a writing intensive course , writing could be derived from these other modes, such as the transcript for a podcast or interview, and written descriptions or annotations of visual texts. The world of writing is so much bigger than the kind of prose ChatGPT generates - and so much more fun! Writing is digital, multimodal, linked, and networked. It involves words, images, sources, and audio, it’s delivered via links and video, and it’s colorful and loud. When students are asked to work towards composing dynamic, multimodal writing for a motivating purpose, using an AI Text Generator fades away as even an option. 

Consider using ChatGPT in class to discuss its results.

Show students what response it generates to course work, and ask them to analyze the quality of the response. Is it meaningful, or does it simply sound good? What do students offer as human writers that the computer does not? Are there writing tasks well-suited for a computer? (Who of us hasn’t benefited from spellcheck?) 

If you do have students use and build on the bot’s writing in class, make sure you discuss the values and implications of doing so. What does using ChatGPT to write communicate about what the user values, and what our society values as a whole? If many writers used such a program to start their writing, what are some of the societal implications? What kinds of writing situations might ChatGPT writing be good for? In what kinds of writing situations would it be inappropriate or fail?

It is a rich opportunity to discuss rhetorical concepts such as context and purpose, which make the work of writing far richer than a sentence that sounds good. In their CETL Teaching Tip Beyond “Gotcha!” Proactive Plagiarism Pedagogy , OU’s Sherry Wynn Perdue and Melissa Vervinck promoted using these tools for pedagogical purposes rather than for surveillance.

From the Department of Writing and Rhetoric

Hi colleagues! This is Crystal VanKooten, chair of Writing and Rhetoric at OU. As a faculty member who studies writing and compositional practices and a follower of many writing teachers on Twitter and online, I’ve seen and heard many different responses to the recent advances in ChatGPT’s capabilities. These responses have ranged from sheer panic to bored indifference. 

As Christina’s example above shows, ChatGPT will generate logical, error-free chunks of writing in response to a writing prompt. To read more of the bot’s prose, check out writing professor Anna Mills’ collection of sample AI-generated essays . Overall, the writing is….well, it’s ok ! It’s not the most eloquent, original prose, but it’s on topic, grammatically correct, and communicates a discernible argument. 

So as teachers who care about student writing and learning, what do we do? Do we need to stop assigning writing outside of class? Is this a moment of panic?

I don’t think so, and most experts in the teaching of writing don’t either. However, it is a moment to reflect on how and why we assign and assess writing in our courses. We can ask students to use writing  to think and  to learn, an approach to composition that doesn’t focus so much on the end product–those 255 words that the bot spits out. Students can show us their writing-to-think processes and demonstrate their learning through turning in notes and pre-writing, giving feedback to one another on assignments, composing and revising drafts, and reflecting in writing and via audio and video. 

In addition to writing-to-learn and focusing on composition process, students must also write for specific audiences and purposes, when the end product itself is important. For these writing situations, Christina’s tips above will come in handy. There may be times when analyzing, critiquing, and even building on ChatGPT’s writing could lead to a better understanding of what works (and what doesn’t) in different writing contexts. Anna Mills has curated an extensive resource list on AI Text Generators and Teaching Writing on the Writing Across the Curriculum Clearinghouse that provides links to articles, questions to consider, and strategies for mitigating harm to student learning for those who’d like to dig in more.

So my advice for other teachers is this: don’t panic, but do think critically about how and why students write in your class, and what you want them to take away from the writing experience that you design. 

In Conclusion

Let’s see this as an opportunity to ask important questions about our role as educators and how to authentically engage students in learning. We’re happy to explore the possibilities with you: Meet with Us to review writing assessment strategies or overall create a learning environment in which everyone works to uphold academic integrity.

Save and adapt a Google Doc version of this teaching tip.

About the Authors

Written by Christina Moore, associate director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, and Crystal VanKooten, associate professor of Writing and Rhetoric at Oakland University.   Image from Open AI’s ChatGPT .  Others may share and adapt under Creative Commons License CC BY-NC . 

View all CETL Weekly Teaching Tips . 

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