OECD’s Digital Education Report 2021, CIO News, ET CIO

Artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics and blockchain technology when used in a coordinated and combined manner can potentially revolutionize the education system. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) 2021 report highlighted the growing importance of robotics, AI and blockchain technology in the field of education, from schools to universities.

The report highlighted the need for advancement or digital education in recent times, citing the following conditions in the current scenario:

• With the Covid-19 pandemic, many schools switched to digital learning to continue their children’s education
• However, screen fatigue and stress from adapting to digital devices over a long period of time created problems in gearing up the learning process
• Technological preparedness and the use of innovative technology can better prepare schools worldwide to implement effective digital education

The three advanced technologies of the time, AI, blockchain and robotics, are already being used in some countries. A look at each of them:AI and its increasing relevance in education:

• AI can enhance digital learning experiences by making them more interactive and adaptive in the following ways:
• It can help teachers gauge the varying attention and focus of different students and the areas where they are bored and the areas where they excel.
• AI can enable amateur teachers to better perceive and get an idea of ​​the classroom, such as when to slow down, speed up and ask questions to stimulate a passive class
• The learning analysis can help with making practical assessments and exams through simulations, in vocational settings
• AI technology can help reintegrate learning and assessment, using real-time data and feedback to help students

The role of robotics in digital education:

• Effective use of robotics will require reinventing the teacher’s role to a large extent. Robotics in combination with AI can help improve the teaching quality of human teachers in the following ways:
• Social robots are constantly fed a stream of data and have enormous potential to disrupt teaching and learning. For example, while studying psychology on a computer, the computer can in turn measure how psychology is being studied by the student and make the learning experience much more detailed
• Robots can easily perform some routine actions by the teacher. For example, it might take 2 students to a corner of the classroom and have a 10-minute French conversation while the rest of the class works on action verbs with the human teacher

The growing importance of blockchain:

• Blockchain has been claimed to be the most mature technology through applications among the three technologies covered in the report
• The blockchain can relieve the education system of the task of maintaining decades of data on certificates and degrees
• Blockchain-verified qualifications can make the entire process of issuing certificates, and maintaining huge amounts of data and records extremely fluid, simple and manageable

The OECD report concluded by emphasizing the following points about the implementation of these technologies:
The relationship between the use of technology and learning outcomes varies greatly between nations
Teachers must invest in learning about the use of AI and robotics, and in optimizing them with a humane approach to provide the best possible education to students
Technology produces the best results when people are involved in using and benefiting from it and not when they are left to their own devices.