Beyond Automation: How AI Elevates the Art of Teaching

Behind every successful student is a teacher who continuously improves the classroom environment to make learning relevant, engaging, and understandable. Over the past few years, many students have used artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance their creativity, get in-the-moment support with assignments and research, and improve their written submissions. Educators, however, have been slower in leveraging these technologies as policies and professional development have emerged. Tech that supports the teacher in supporting the student can and should be leveraged to promote differentiation and help teachers in their varied responsibilities.

AI can do more than automate routine administrative tasks; it can also support teachers in lesson planning, offer personalized feedback, and help teachers with differentiated assets and customized student support. AI has a place as a digital teaching assistant (TA), reducing time-intensive planning, grading, resource curation, and creation work to free educators to spend valuable time engaging in the relational aspects of their work and supporting students in achieving their full potential.

Here's a closer look at how AI can empower educators and improve the classroom experience.

Adapting to Fit Student Diverse Needs

One size fits some curriculum has long been our de facto instructional content offering. We know that pace and path vary with most students, and learning rates and abilities make it hard to adapt any lesson to all needs in the classroom. AI can help address this by personalizing content based on each student's progress. For faster learners, AI can provide more advanced material and, with the right prompt engineering, can author a variety of “Depth of Knowledge” (DOK level-two and -three questions. For those who need help building conceptual understanding, AI can simplify an explanation or provide students with extra practice.

Many colleges and universities have turned to Pearson’s My Lab to generate customized courses and personalized learning. For example, instructors can access dynamic study tools and customize lecture capabilities to receive real-time insights. These insights also make it easier for every student to be challenged appropriately. The ones who excel can move further ahead, while those who require extra practice get it in a honed manner.

AI prompts can help students build knowledge, compare and contrast, and inquiry skills. The assessment opportunity is designed so that the learning is visible and not something that AI can create on behalf of the student. Instead, assessment tasks require learners to express themselves through rhetoric, debate, scientific methods, etc. They can also help students move from consumers to creators. Packback Questions, for example, acts as a digital TA by managing discussion communities.

Students benefit from deeper personalization that meets them with appropriate levels of rigor while accelerating their application of 21st-century skills. Deploying AI in our classrooms with structure and intentionality helps develop AI literacy. It sets students up for future careers while supporting teacher practice and the complex workload that they manage.

Using Data to Refine Teaching Strategies

AI can also be a potent aid in refining teaching strategies. By gathering student engagement and performance data in real time, educators can make informed decisions about which teaching strategy works best for which type of student. With such analysis in hand, AI can help uncover potential gaps, allowing the instructor to fine-tune their teaching approach. Interactive activities may serve one student well, while another may prefer more static visual displays.

The AI platform RealizeIt, for example, monitors student progress and focus. Its detailed data analysis reveals the most effective content and instructional strategies. Educators can then refine their teaching strategies accordingly. Besides monitoring progress at the individual level, AI can recommend adaptations if enthusiasm or focus drops. In this respect, teachers are kept abreast of students' shifting needs to keep lessons lively and relevant.

By analyzing lesson or quiz responses, AI can reveal patterns for instructors. For example, Civitas Learning has created a predictive analytics platform to identify students at risk of underperforming. It uses real-time insights to support students proactively.

With that valuable knowledge, instructors need not wait until the end of a semester to realize specific gaps in a student’s understanding of the material. They can immediately adapt their teaching to offer more targeted support to keep on track toward success.

Meet Your New Teaching Assistant

The role of an educator is multilayered, including designing lesson plans, teaching, grading, and building relationships with students. AI can automate some of these tasks, freeing the teacher to focus on what is most important: engaging with the students and establishing an environment that fosters growth and knowledge.

With each advancement, AI's potential in education expands. It’s quickly moved to include natural language, image and video creation, and many other multi-modal capabilities. It also has the potential to shape learning environments that are personalized, dynamic, and responsive to each student's needs. AI can further assist educators in planning, resource creation, diagnostics, uncovering new ways of engaging their students, and refining their experiences by offering real-time feedback, personal support, and improved teaching strategies.

Just as every other industry uses AI to develop and enhance processes and products, AI can be a powerful educational tool. As virtual teaching assistants in collaboration with human educators, AI has the power to create more effective, flexible, and interactive learning experiences.

Jason Bedford leads cross-functional teams at Kaplan that support students, families, and educators with the right resources, tools, and knowledge to be college- and career-ready. He aims to bring about positive individual and organizational transformation.

The content of this article is provided for informational purposes only. Kaplan is not affiliated with Pearson Education, Inc., Packback, Inc., CCKF, Inc., or Civitas Learning, Inc. Any references to third-party companies, websites, products, or services are for informational purposes only and do not constitute an endorsement by Kaplan.