Rooting for robots

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Reading Time: 8 min read

The image above by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC

By Dr Tony Mays
Director: Education COL

I was recently invited to give a keynote address at the Unisa International Teaching and Learning Conference on a subtheme related to the use of technology.

The presentation was titled Rooting for Robots through Pragmatic Pedagogy.

The title was inspired partly by a visit to The Sphere, Las Vegas where I met three robots, partly from living with an adult educator who is an early adopter of new technology and partly because a growing number of partners that I work with in COL’s Open Schooling initiative are exploring blended and online provision as an alternative to the more traditional print-and contact-based model, which is becoming increasingly expensive to sustain so that I also have a vested professional interest in how we might best deploy appropriate technologies in appropriate ways.

I am a pragmatist at heart, interested in the interplay between assumptions about how I think people might learn and how I think they might best be supported using appropriate technology in particular contexts. Given the continuing digital divide, it is hardly likely anytime soon that we can adopt a one-size-fits-all model of open schooling provision. In many contexts, we need to provide print-based and contact-supported models, broadcast technologies, and hybrid, blended and online learning within different contexts in the same country. A logical starting point is to ensure that we cover the school curriculum in text and graphics only for contexts in which we still need to use print or enable the download of basic digital content to a low-end device at a Wi-Fi-enabled school or community centre. For learners and teachers with more sophisticated devices but still have Internet challenges, we can consider integrating video and audio content, perhaps in the form of an open textbook, which could be downloaded to a personal device at a public Wi-Fi-enabled centre. For learners and teachers with access to high-end devices and reliable and affordable internet, we can explore hybrid, blended and fully online course content, which integrates h5p and other interactive elements into the content.

However, in these latter contexts, we can also use technologies that support teachers and learners in the learning process. Some years ago, I worked with a group of young people who had been identified by a South African organisation called Harambee. These young people had completed schooling but were not well enough to proceed into formal further education and training. They were looking for entry-level jobs, but many could not pass a standard industry numeracy test despite completing twelve years of mathematics. We enrolled these learners in Khan Academy at the 6th-grade level.

The Khan Academy was an early adopter of machine learning, and within about 20 minutes, each learner was on a slightly different trajectory. Encouraged by immediate automated feedback, the award of digital badges and a real-time progress dashboard, these learners spent several hours a day ‘doing maths’. At the end of the day, I was able to go into the profile of the learners who had assigned me as their tutor, check their progress and provide individualised suggestions where it seemed this would be useful, typically needing to follow up only about five per cent of the more than one-hundred learners who had signed up. After a couple of weeks, learners started to present themselves again for the industry numeracy tests they had previously failed, and most not only passed but went on to access entry-level employment as a result. This experience made me an advocate for technology-enhanced teaching.

As more institutions move into the online space, using platforms like Moodle, they find that, initially, at least, they spend much time answering repeated questions about the platform and then, subsequently, about the course content. These questions can be answered by chatbots trained on large-language models, as COL’s recent work with the University of Samoa and the University of the South Pacific attests. More recent innovations in Generative AI have added support to teachers for planning, assessment design, personalisation and reporting if we suitably build the capacity of teachers to do so, if they are willing and if they are aware of and can pre-empt some of the possible challenges which need to address upfront.

So, in short, I’m rooting for robots to help teachers with planning, differentiating, providing routine feedback, managing admin, etc., so that teachers can focus more of their time on human-human interaction and engagement.

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