The Learning Success Blog

What's artificial intelligence got to do with learning and education? Actually, as it turns out quite a lot and in the future it may have an even bigger impact on how teachers teach and how students learn.

I was fortunate to attend the Australian Tutoring Association 2019 annual conference in Melbourne, where I heard educator Moya Gibb Smith give a presentation about the role of artificial intelligence (or AI as its generally known) in education and learning and how it's going to affect students, teachers, and tutors.

According to Dr David Bach, a Harvard-trained scientist, physician and serial entrepreneur, the rapidly developing “neuro-performance” industry will change what we understand about the limits of human performance in sport, business and learning.

As a parent or teacher, why should you care about this?  And what is neuro-performance anyway?

Neuro-performance is the practice of improving brain function to achieve a higher level of human performance...including speed, strength, decision-making, learning, thinking and the ability to perform under pressure by training the brain so it’s messages are clear, accurate and fast.

It is now being used in elite sports and in business to enable participants to achieve greater levels of performance.

What's changed in educational neuroscience technology this century?

How has neuroscience research and the development of technology impacted the tools educators have to improve learning outcomes for all students?

Recently I was interviewed on a podcast produced by Sentral, providers of proven web-based student management software.

The discussion focussed on how educational neuroscience and technology had changed in the last two decades, from the turn of the century in the year 2000, until now, almost 20 years later.

And it covered a wide sweep of topics as well - from how students are learning English in China with the help of educational neuroscience programs to some thoughts about cost versus value in educational decision making.

Maybe not soon.

But it’s highly likely robots will be used to assist human teachers in the not too distant future.

That’s according to a research study by scientists from universities in USA, Japan and Europe.

The study involved a review of more than 100 published articles, which have shown robots to be effective at increasing learning outcomes.