Machine Learning can transform education

Futurist Arthur C. Clarke wrote, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” The magic of software (giving data and rules to get answers) is often confused with the magic of machine learning (giving data and answers to get rules) but it is machine learning not software that is transforming the world of computer chess.

So far, computer chess programs codified the actions of the best human players and inevitably pivoted around the strategy of “material”, wherein the number and value of pieces mattered most. But recently, AlphaZero playing Stockfish counter-intuitively sacrificed a bishop for a pawn. Reports suggest AlphaZero taught itself chess from scratch in just four hours by playing against itself and rejected human rules developed over centuries.

As it started with only the basic rules, researchers suggest that its lack of knowledge of human chess history may have enabled AlphaZero to see the game in a fresh way. We’d like to make the case that machine learning is transforming online education, but Indian online education is held back by regulatory cholesterol.

Before diving into online education, let’s reflect on challenges in education. Knowing must shift to learning because Google knows everything. Metrics need shifting from inputs to outcomes because only money is not working. Differentiation and personalization are not about making things easier for children but making learning accessible by tapping into motivations and abilities. Assessment needs to shift from annual exams to regular feedback. Teachers knowing content is not the same as their ability to create learning.

There is an element of eat your spinach in education, but schools largely work for front-row students. Lifelong learning needs a continuum between prepare, repair and upgrade. Employability is an objective. Timetables are an industrial-era model of one size fits all that blunt choices and learner agency. Most importantly, if you think formal education is everything, then just look at the president of the US.

Many educators agree online learning can transform education, but they don’t know how. Textbook and PowerPoint repackaged e-learning—the digital equivalent of paving the cow path rather than building a highway—mean that, so far, online offerings have not been able to blunt the obvious downsides of physical classrooms (one size fits all, huge costs, uneven teacher quality, etc.) despite obvious advantages (teaching with different speeds to people with different backgrounds and different starting points, class of one, cost, on-the-go, on-demand, crowdsourced, gamified, etc.).

We believe that the massification of machine learning could be the missing ingredient—enabling personalization, flip classrooms, rethinking assessments, enabling non-conventional credentialing, etc.