AI has enormous potential to improve education

AI has enormous potential to improve education.

It has been described as the passport to the future, the lighting of a fire, the most powerful weapon we can use to change the world. And yet, in Australia, education is buckling under the weight of a range of new pressures.

The federal government claims we’re in the middle of an “unprecedented” teacher shortfall, and that we’ll see a gap of 4000 high school teachers by 2025, particularly in rural and remote schools. Compounding this is the fact a staggering 84 per cent of educators are considering leaving the profession altogether, citing heavy workloads and poor work-life balance.

Schools are also becoming attractive targets for the nefarious antics of cyber criminals due to the vast amounts of parent, teacher, and student information stored on their systems.

Who could forget last year when the Department of Education and Training in Victoria had its systems compromised, with the data of thousands of school families ending up in the hands of hackers. In fact, last year education and training was the sector most targeted sector by cyber criminals.

Alongside these threats, the education sector – indeed, every sector – has witnessed the astronomical rise of AI. This has been largely driven by generative AI tools such as Open AI’s ChatGPT, which draws upon troves of data to provide answers to queries in real time.

Education responded to the rise with understandable caution.

Most public schools in Australia have imposed an outright ban on ChatGPT over concerns students will use the tool to plagiarise. While valid, this is also symptomatic of a nationwide attitude of swimming against the AI tide.

The Productivity Commission’s recent five-year report found fewer than 2 per cent of Australian businesses are engaging with new innovations such as AI. This supports ManageEngine’s recent survey of global IT decision-makers, which found Australia and New Zealand are the lowest adopters of AI and ­machine learning in the world.

For the education sector, this hesitant approach could result in students, parents, and teachers missing out on AI’s myriad of benefits. Perhaps the most significant benefit of AI is its ability to ease the load for teachers.

AI can take on a lot of the routine or time-consuming tasks teachers are forced to cram into their days, such as preparing lesson plans and materials, generating discussion points, and researching unfamiliar topics to achieve a baseline understanding.

This is a key concern because a 2022 Productivity Commission report determined overwork – particularly the amount of “low-value” tasks including paperwork – was the main reason cited by teachers for considering switching careers.

Beyond teaching staff, automating repeatable tasks can create efficiencies for schools’ IT teams. We recently helped a local school automate the process of setting its 1200 students and 150 teachers and staff up with access to collaboration tools, which saw the IT team earn back a day of work.

These types of efficiencies are crucial to attract and retain technology staff in the tight job market. Common sense dictates the more efficiently and effectively an employee can accomplish their job, the more likely they are to feel productive, satisfied, and loyal.

A recent study found 23 per cent of Generation Z and 19 per cent of Generation Y are using AI to complete tasks, compared with just 8 per cent of baby boomers. And yet our survey found the main roadblock preventing staff from taking full advantage of workplace technologies is that they have generally been excluded from helping choose or utilise the technology.

Can you see what’s wrong with this picture? As Australia’s industries strive to attract emerging talent into their ranks, education needs to invite them into the technology conversation, and stay on top of their evolving preferences.

The cybersecurity field is particularly feeling the pinch of skills shortages, and yet our survey found Australian and New Zealand IT decision-makers are the least likely to use AI and machine learning to fend off attacks.

These tools can provide around-the-clock threat detection, which is key given students often access the network on their own devices outside hours, increasing the scope for an attack.

These tools can also prevent students from falling through the cracks. For instance, AI can provide automated notifications to parents when their child misses an assignment or falls behind in class, and analyse student behaviour against a baseline of data to identify academic or social problems. AI can also offer avenues for customised learning, enabling students to go at their own pace, providing personalised feedback for improvement and giving tailored experiences that cater to their strengths and weaknesses.

While fear of the unknown is understandable, and the risks AI poses to learning outcomes are well-documented, the education sector shouldn’t completely shy away from these technologies. After all, few could have predicted that the internet, which was once dismissed as a passing fad, would one day supplant libraries to become the world’s biggest knowledge portal.

AI-enabled tools hold enormous potential in easing workloads in the face of teacher burnout, automating processes amid skills shortages, and providing tailored experiences to students and parents.

Surely an institution based on learning, growing and shaping the minds of the future shouldn’t turn its back on the world we’re hurtling towards.

Vinayak Sreedhar is country manager, Australia, for ManageEngine.