{"id":244,"date":"2020-11-03T18:04:47","date_gmt":"2020-11-04T02:04:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0162\/?p=244"},"modified":"2020-11-03T18:04:47","modified_gmt":"2020-11-04T02:04:47","slug":"educational-technology-in-2030-ai-driven-chatbots-as-teachers-assistants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0162\/educational-technology-in-2030-ai-driven-chatbots-as-teachers-assistants\/","title":{"rendered":"Educational Technology in 2030: AI Driven Chatbots as Teacher\u2019s Assistants"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the year 2030, higher education institutions will continue to grow in both faculty and student populations.\u00a0 The increased hiring of part-time faculty over full-time in those institutions will force them into a position where they will have to rely on technological intervention to provide their students with engaging and valuable learning experiences.\u00a0 Chatbots, software applications that allow for simulated conversations with users on the internet, will fill in the gaps where educators are unavailable to communicate and will record interactions with students to develop learning profiles.<\/p>\n

It has been the trend in the past ten years to hire part-time faculty in greater numbers than full-time and there is little reason to believe the hiring patterns will change in the next ten.\u00a0 There are a number of reasons that support the decision to hire part-time faculty.\u00a0 Wyles (1998) observed the many benefits part-time faculty bring to their educational institutions, including reduced cost, flexibility in course delivery, and a continued connection to industry knowledge and practices (pp. 89, 92).\u00a0 In addition, there appears to be no distinction between the quality of education provided by part-time faculty when compared to full-time.\u00a0 Rogers (2015) asserted that students were not negatively impacted by the teaching practices of part-time faculty and that there appeared to be little support for the argument to increase full-time hiring to increase learning outcomes for students (p. 682).\u00a0 These benefits are unlikely to shift within the next ten years.\u00a0 On the contrary, observing the hiring practices of one Canadian practical college, as represented in Figure 1, the trend towards hiring part-time faculty over full-time is increasing, showing a greater divide between the two designations.\u00a0 Since part-time faculty are limited in the number of course hours they are permitted to teach, the volume of educators employed at educational institutions is likely to increase by the year 2030.\u00a0 At the same time, the number of students for which each educator is responsible, is also increasing.\u00a0 Eicher et al. (2018) noted during the implementation of an Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a teacher\u2019s assistant, that the growing number of students in their online course had grown to a size where interactions with students by humans was becoming unmanageable (p. 88).\u00a0 As a result, it is likely that an increasingly part-time faculty will require additional technical assistance in the future.<\/p>\n

Figure 1<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fanshawe College Faculty Distribution<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"
Note. This figure represents the categories of faculty employed at Fanshawe College between 2012 and 2019.\u00a0 Part-time and Partial Load are both considered part-time faculty and are combined as Total Part-time.\u00a0 Full-time and Sessional are both considered full-time faculty are combined as Total Full-Time. a) Data was acquired from the OPSEU Local 110 October College Staffing Survey available at http:\/\/www.opseu110.ca\/for-stewards\/college-staffing-survey-data\/. b) Data for the 2013 academic year was unavailable and is not represented here.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In order to keep the cost of human resources to a minimum, educational institutions will increasingly rely on technological interventions to support educators.\u00a0 Chatbots powered by AI are a likely candidate to act as a teacher\u2019s assistant for faculty, allowing them to focus their time effectively.\u00a0 To begin with, there could be concerns that interacting with a machine rather than a human teacher could reduce student engagement.\u00a0 Crutzen et al. (2011) indicated that students would react positively to communicating with a chatbot (p. 519).\u00a0 If students enjoy their interactions with a chatbot, they will be more likely to make use of it when they need questions answered when the teacher is not available.\u00a0 Smutny and Schreiberova (2020) demonstrated that chatbots are instantly available and can provide students with assistance while communicating with them in a conversational manner (p. 2).\u00a0 In this way, students need not wait for a response from an unavailable educator and can continue to work on their studies on their own time, increasing the accessibility of their education.\u00a0 Additionally, the use of chatbots could increase course participation by alleviating the anxiety of some students.\u00a0 Burke (2019) suggested that some students avoid asking teachers questions due to a fear of being ridiculed or judged and that the use of a system that provided them with an opportunity to engage in class anonymously increased their participation.\u00a0 At the same time, Crutzen et al. (2011) showed that adolescents perceived chatbots as both faster and more anonymous than information lines and search engines (p. 518).\u00a0 These two facts combined; an environment of perceived anonymity, and an increase in participation under that condition; suggests that students would be more engaged in a course with the usage of chatbots as a teacher\u2019s assistant.<\/p>\n

Another positive outcome of the use of chatbots as teachers\u2019 assistants would be the ability to gather data on student interactions to be used for developing personalized learning.\u00a0 By the year 2030, it is very likely that students will be accessing their virtual learning environment on a number of devices such as their computer, mobile device, and even wearable technology such as a smart watch.\u00a0 Those devices would not only be used to gather information on students\u2019 interactions with the chatbot, but physiological data would also be recorded to be used to determine their emotional state.\u00a0 Knox (2020) argued that wearable technology could be used to capture physiological data including facial expressions, neurological responses, and heart rate amongst others to determine an individual\u2019s feelings to identify at risk students, which could then be used to modify their behaviour (pp. 35, 39).\u00a0 The information gathered could be used to inform the chatbot\u2019s interactions with the student in order to provide subtle suggestions that would gradually shift their behaviour in a direction which would be more conducive to their academic success.\u00a0 This will only be the beginning as AI becomes more efficient with data usage and can make analyses with less information.\u00a0 Sucholutsky and Schonlau (2020) have provided evidence that AI can be used to infer accurate conclusions based on an extremely limited amount of data.\u00a0 As the efficiency of machine learning accelerates, it will be possible for AI powered chatbots to come to conclusions about students\u2019 performance and emotional states without having to be exposed to all of the data currently required.\u00a0 By 2030, it is feasible to believe that this technology will have advanced sufficiently to have a significant impact in education.<\/p>\n

In conclusion, it is likely that educational institutions will continue the trend of hiring part-time faculty over full-time, significantly increasing the size of their teaching staff. At the same time, the student populations will also increase, and educators will be responsible for increasingly large class sizes.\u00a0 As a result, those institutions will be forced into a position, as a cost saving measure, to employ AI powered chatbots to maintain, or even improve, the student learning experience.<\/p>\n

References<\/h3>\n

Burke, L. (2019). Behind the Back Channel: Can Giving Students Anonymity Help Them Engage In Class? Inside Higher Ed<\/em>. https:\/\/www.insidehighered.com\/digital-learning\/article\/2019\/12\/06\/students-may-benefit-anonymous-back-channel-communications<\/p>\n

Crutzen, R., Peters, G. J. Y., Portugal, S. D., Fisser, E. M., & Grolleman, J. J. (2011). An artificially intelligent chat agent that answers adolescents\u2019 questions related to sex, drugs, and alcohol: An exploratory study. Journal of Adolescent Health<\/em>, 48<\/em>(5), 514\u2013519. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1016\/j.jadohealth.2010.09.002<\/p>\n

Eicher, B., Polepeddi, L., & Goel, A. (2018). Jill Watson Doesn\u2019t Care if You\u2019re Pregnant: Grounding AI Ethics in Empirical Studies. AIES 2018 – Proceedings of the 2018 AAAI\/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society<\/em>, 88\u201394. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1145\/3278721.3278760<\/p>\n

Knox, J., Williamson, B., & Bayne, S. (2020). Machine behaviourism: future visions of \u2018learnification\u2019 and \u2018datafication\u2019 across humans and digital technologies. Learning, Media and Technology<\/em>, 45<\/em>(1), 31\u201345. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1080\/17439884.2019.1623251<\/p>\n

Rogers, G. S. (2015). Part-time faculty and community college student success. Community College Journal of Research and Practice<\/em>, 39<\/em>(7), 673\u2013684. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1080\/10668926.2014.908426<\/p>\n

Smutny, P., & Schreiberova, P. (2020). Chatbots for learning: A review of educational chatbots for the Facebook Messenger. Computers and Education<\/em>, 151<\/em>(February), 1-11. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1016\/j.compedu.2020.103862<\/p>\n

Sucholutsky, I., & Schonlau, M. (2020). \u2019Less Than One\u2019-Shot Learning: Learning N Classes From M<N Samples<\/em>. http:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/2009.08449<\/p>\n

Wyles, B. A. (1998). Adjunct faculty in the community college: realities and challenges. New Directions for Higher Education, 104, 89-93. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1002\/he.10409<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the year 2030, higher education institutions will continue to grow in both faculty and student populations.\u00a0 The increased hiring of part-time faculty over full-time in those institutions will force them into a position where they will have to rely on technological intervention to provide their students with engaging and valuable learning experiences.\u00a0 Chatbots, software … Continue reading Educational Technology in 2030: AI Driven Chatbots as Teacher\u2019s Assistants<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":184,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lrnt523"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0162\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0162\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0162\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0162\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/184"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0162\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0162\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":246,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0162\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244\/revisions\/246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0162\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0162\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0162\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}