Innovolution STEMEdu

There are only two Problems in Education :

WHAT we teach, and HOW we teach ~

THE WHAT~ We’re headed for a world where you’re either going to be able to write algorithms or be replaced by algorithms~Bridgewater hedge-fund billionaire Ray Dalio

What should students learn in the age of AI? And all the corollary, provocatively phrased questions: “If you can search, or have an intelligent agent find, anything, why learn anything? What is truly worth learning?” It is widely expected that AI will have an enormous impact on what we teach, as it will impact many occupations. Take for instance the Organization for Economic and Co-operative Development (OECD) Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC)

Survey: which measures adults’ proficiency in key information- processing skills—literacy, numeracy and problem solving in technology- rich environments—and gathers information and data on how adults use their skills at home and at work. Already, AI is matching more than 50% of adult human-proficiency levels, and closing in on another 36%.

Source: Elliott Stuart, “Computers and the Future of Skill Demand.”~ Such progress is bound to continue at an accelerating, pace. IBM’s Open Leaderboard effort attempts to understand the progress being made by tracking many variables. According to IBM’s Leaderboard, AI should be getting into the realm of deeper self-learning by the early-Mid 2020s and become capable of assisting, collaborating, coaching and mediating by the early 2030s.

Given all the above, the What section makes a case for the necessity to focus on a broad, deep, and versatile education as a hedge against uncertain futures, which in turn means a reinvigorated focus on the deeper learning goals of a modern education:

• Versatility, for robustness to face life and work.
• Relevance, for applicability, and student motivation.
• Transfer for broad future actionability. All of which are to be developed via: • Selective emphasis on important areas of traditional knowledge.
• The addition of modern knowledge
• A focus on essential content and core concepts.
• Interdisciplinarity, using real-world applications.
• Embedded skills, character, and meta learning into the knowledge domains.

THE HOW~
How can AI enhance and transform education? First, it is important to make the distinction between education technology (EdTech) at large and artificial intelligence in education (AIED) specifically. A quick summary of the affordances of EdTech is appropriate at this stage, as the taxonomy and ontology of the field is quite murky. Using the SAMR9 model that follows, the How section showcases how AIED will span all layers, with its maximum impact growing as it moves up the stack. Substitution, augmentation, modification, and redefinition model (SAMR). Note that the examples shown in the preceding figure represent today’s apps, not tomorrow’s, and only serve to help explain the model. Often these apps are collapsed under one term, technology, and then there is much confusion about the potential of technology. This model helps us to delineate the different types of impact that technology can have, from mere substitution with no functional changes, all the way through the creation of new, previously inconceivable tasks as a result of technology.

The Role of Assessments What gets measured gets managed.

Lord Kelvin Assessments have been the hidden villain behind a lot of education debates, and a powerful one at enshrining institutional inertia. Repurposing the famous Aristotelian syllogism:10 Lack of, or poor, education is at the root of many human problems. Assessments define the education we get. Therefore, assessments are the root of many human problems. Although not a focus of this book, it is clear that assessments have an oversized role to play in the change process, and as part of the AI-driven systems of (mostly formative) assessments. Andreas Schleicher, director of the OECD’s Directorate of Education and Skills, publicly stated “What is easy to measure is also easy to automate,” thereby throwing the gauntlet to the assessment world to readjust its focus and thus drive change. Lastly Readers will have different priorities and interest in this topic. Policymakers and curriculum designers may initially favor the What section, while teachers and IT specialists may at first favor the How section. The What and How sections are therefore written to be independent of each other; the appendices also reflect an emphasis on digestibility, particularly for the technical details. Further, we are all pressed for time, so our writing philosophy is, to use Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s words, “Perfection is attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away.”

According to UNESCO: “Quality education systems have to enable learners to continuously adapt their competencies while continuously acquiring and even developing new ones. These competencies are diverse in scope; ranging from core skills, content knowledge, cognitive skills, soft skills, to occupational skills, they enable us to meet a complex demand or carry out a complex activity or task successfully or effectively in a certain context. Their typologies and approaches are as diverse as the entities—countries, organizations and individuals—that define them.”In Four-Dimensional Education the Center for Curriculum Redesign (CCR) synthesizes the curricula from jurisdictions and organizations around the world, and together with input from teachers and administrators, as well as reports on expectations of employers, economists and futurists, creates a unifying framework that is: Comprehensive. There are no major elements missing. Compact. It is actionable and deployable. Uncorrelated. No duplication or confusion. Abstracted to the appropriate level. It is organized. Globally relevant. For broad acceptability. This framework breaks educational goals into four dimensions.

1. Knowledge—what we know and understand. 2. Skills—what we can do with what we know. 3. Character—how we behave and engage in the world.
4. Meta learning—how we reflect and adapt.

By looking across research, frameworks, and standards from around the world, we were able to create a list of total competencies (in addition to knowledge) to represent the goals of a twenty-first century education. They are visualised through the following Venn diagram.
Because the competencies (skills, character, and meta-learning) can be pretty complex, we conducted an in-depth analysis of the way they have been conceptualized, and broke them down into sub-competencies.
Our current work involves translating these subcompetencies one step further: into classroom actions and habits. An extra challenge to this work is that realistically, there cannot be a class created to teach each one of these independently. In fact, the case could be made that they are actually best taught in the context of knowledge! Therefore, we are now working on identifying the most conducive combinations and gathering ideas from experts in order to further expound on the competencies. The average focus area of this study concentrates on the knowledge component. After all, it is the dimension that is the most directly and immediately affected by technological changes, and it deserves to be examined carefully in its own right.

✍🏽 AI Research for Teachers and Educators