How data and AI are changing the world of education
Digital systems around the world generate a staggering 2.5 quintillion bytes of new data every day. While this information is generally stored in large data silos where it can be easily accessed by users, industries have been harvesting their data for years to make themselves more efficient and effective.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) enables data holders to transform a passive resource into a powerful catalyst for accelerated growth. For instance, when the state of Nebraska realized that it was spending approximately 655,000 staff hours per year to collect data reports from every school in the territory—an effort that yielded surprisingly few benefits—the Nebraska Department of Education set out to build a Statewide Longitudinal Data System that would allow information to flow in near-real-time from hundreds of sources and deliver actionable insights to state, district, and school leaders; administrators; and educators.
Despite the noticeable positive impact, until recently, the education sector had been relatively slow to embrace digitalization and the use of data and AI to accelerate learning. However, COVID-19 created an urgent need for education systems to use their data to gain visibility into who was engaging in remote learning and where education was taking place. Education leaders the world over were motivated to take decisive action and schools began to make the transition to online learning as quickly as possible.
“Throughout the COVID-19 response we understood clearly the importance of having data in order to measure the impact of this unprecedented disruption to education,” observed Stefania Giannini, Assistant Director-General for Education at UNESCO.
Today, many institutions have settled into a blended or hybrid learning model and want to see what other benefits their digital framework can offer. Using cloud technology enables them to gain visibility and accelerate the impact of teaching and learning systems.
Education Insights, a feature in Microsoft Teams for Education, is a great example of this. It uses data analytics to keep educators informed of students’ engagement, learning progress, and well-being. A wide range of built-in digital apps and tools allows teachers to interact with learners on the platform and gain an overview of how well they are progressing, both at the class and individual levels.
One such tool is Reading Progress, a literacy solution that enables students to record themselves while reading aloud. The program makes a note of all the words that are challenging to the reader and provides visual aids and additional reading exercises to help them improve. Best of all, Reading Progress saves teachers hours of time spent evaluating students one at a time. It also allows teachers to take a personalized approach to teaching by addressing each student’s needs individually.
“Given the power and centrality of literacy in conferring future outcomes, we are very proud of Reading Progress, and we are excited to continue to build on it and do even more,” said Steve Liffick, Vice President Modern Life and Learning.
Among the key benefits of cloud technology are that it allows institutions to retain full ownership of their student data as well as receive expert support from partner technology companies on how to integrate security protocols and create governing policies around that data. Last year, UNESCO’s member states adopted the first-ever global agreement on the ethics of AI. The document outlines a framework for the ethical use of AI including a chapter that is specifically focused on the ethics of AI in education.
UNESCO has been at the forefront of the international response to the global education crisis since the beginning, launching the Global Education Coalition in early 2020. The platform brought together more than 175 members from the UN family, civil society, academia, and the private sector to protect the right to education during the pandemic and beyond.
