{"id":291,"date":"2024-01-03T19:11:12","date_gmt":"2024-01-04T03:11:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0277\/?p=291"},"modified":"2024-01-03T19:11:12","modified_gmt":"2024-01-04T03:11:12","slug":"ai-generated-learning-pathways-how-involved-should-the-humans-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0277\/ai-generated-learning-pathways-how-involved-should-the-humans-be\/","title":{"rendered":"AI-Generated Learning Pathways: How Involved Should the Humans Be?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Author’s note: I recognize this blog post is one day late from our class schedule. Sometimes life gets in the way (I am – after all – just a human), and I felt it more important to deliver with quality rather than a rushed last-minute job. My apologies to my classmates who were expecting this up yesterday. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have some experience already with AI-Generated Learning Pathways through a program called Degreed<\/a>, which my organization promotes to our corporate learning audience as a \u201csocial learning tool\u201d, but I thought this would be a good topic to investigate for this blog post as these sorts of tools are continuing to evolve. The concept of AI-enabled tools like this is that they analyze user data and use their algorithms to recommend potential courses or just-in-time content such as microlearning to users. In my organization we use this tool to help promote life-long learning, connected with content repositories such as LinkedIn Learning, Harvard Business Review articles, TedX (Ted Talks), and our own LMS to recommend learning content. The concept of Learning Pathways refers to how these algorithms will recommend potential courses or content which can help the learner achieve a desired level of proficiency or skill to support their learning goals. For the purpose of this discussion learning pathway can be defined as a collection of self-directed learning content which is recommended for a learner in order to support their life-long learning needs. I am examining this in the context of corporate learning. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The concept of using AI-Generated algorithms to help generate personalized learning paths is not a new concept, but there is potential for this to become a more powerful application of iterative AI technologies given new advancements and tools such as ChatGPT moving into common use. In one Mexican study from 2018 (Sanchez Nigenda et al.), researchers proposed a mathematical algorithm which could be used to generate these sorts of personalized learning pathways by comparing learner metrics to criteria attributed to the content itself, including whether or not the content was mandatory or optional for the learner, the duration of the learning activity, its \u201cutility value\u201d to the overall learning objectives, whether or not it was a prerequisite to other learning activities, and other valuation scores (Sanchez Nigenda et al., 2018, p. 829). This sort of approach, treating both learners and learning content as data to be categorized, treats learning as transactional instead of a human-centered joy of life. Even the authors of this study recognize that \u201cfrom the professional educator perspective, not every pedagogical concept might be quantifiable.\u201d (p. 836) There is also no way these algorithms in the AI-Generated learning paths can operate without <\/em>the technology. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The tool I\u2019m more familiar with, Degreed, is intended to operate by having the learner first identify which business skills they possess, which business skills they wish to develop, and assign a proficiency self-rating to each skill. Optionally they can ask their leader to perform a rating as well, and the system will then average the two scores together. One downfall of this approach compared to the one described above is that it asks for subjective data from humans, but doesn\u2019t that also provide a humanistic strength by engaging the learning in what they <\/em>want to learn, and what their leader can support them in learning? This approach is similar to another study, this time employing MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) which have an AI-driven \u201crecommender\u201d tool which suggests courses along a learning path based on a learner\u2019s identified target job role (Son et al., 2021, p. 59093). I do not profess to be a data scientist nor am I an expert in designing algorithms, but it seems to me that keeping the learner (and in the case of my business\u2019 model, the learner\u2019s business leader) involved in the identification of job roles or skills to be developed, the potential creation of learning pathways enabled by AI tools could improve learner engagements and learning outcomes. However, by involving the human input of these tools we also run the risks of them not being used as intended (that is certainly the case in my organization where very few learners have filled out their skills profile to take advantage of the algorithm), so perhaps we won\u2019t understand the full value of these tools until learners are more engaged in using them fully?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

References<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sanchez Nigenda, R., Maya Padr\u00f3n, C., Mart\u00ednez-Salazar, I., & Torres-Guerrero, F. (2018). Design and evaluation of planning and mathematical models for generating learning paths. Computational Intelligence<\/em>, 34<\/em>(3), 821\u2013838. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1111\/coin.12134<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Son, N. T., Jaafar, J., Aziz, I. A., & Anh, B. N. (2021). Meta-Heuristic Algorithms for Learning Path Recommender at MOOC. IEEE Access<\/em>, 9<\/em>, 59093\u201359107. https:\/\/ieeexplore.ieee.org\/abstract\/document\/9399414<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Author’s note: I recognize this blog post is one day late from our class schedule. Sometimes life gets in the way (I am – after all – just a human), and I felt it more important to deliver with quality rather than a rushed last-minute job. My apologies to my classmates who were expecting this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":294,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lrnt524"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0277\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0277\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0277\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0277\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/294"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0277\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0277\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":292,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0277\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291\/revisions\/292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0277\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0277\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0277\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}