A look to the future: AI?s place in education and language assessment

08 Sep 2020 - Arun Balajiee

Talk Speaker: David Booth

Talk Date: 09/08/2020

David Booth is a researcher in AI for educational and assessment software tools at Pearson. Most of the talk from Dr. Booth was in the direction of applications of AI situated in educational context, the possibility of neutralizing human bias factors in assessment by introducing AI solutions and such. The main focus of assessment tools at Pearson were to grade the speaking and writing responses. It is however becoming clear for the people developing these tools at Pearson, including Dr. Booth who discusses that the AI doesn’t successfully replace the pen and pencil model of speaking/writing responses.

Some of the known challenges of humans grading the exams is that there is lack of consistency in rubrics for rating, and also this changes across time. There is also the potential introduction of bias by humans which could lead to curtailing the grading.

While AI could possibly be able to successful replace humans on these counts – the main aspect of teachers it not grading papers – it is the ability to provide feedback to learners and the more immediate this feedback the better. Dr. Booth comments that only when an AI systems is able to provide feedback that can help in general and specific skill improvement of the learner, it true purpose of applied AI in education is achieved.

While the talk mostly dabbled several of these issues – some in depth others with a cursory glance – we realize that the applications of AI in a lot of fields has just begun. While the advancements in the research when we look at AI as an isolated field has been immense and growing at an increased pace with every passing year, it’s far reaching potential and application in different fields is yet to be tapped. While growth of the field is important in maintaining the state-of-art, a more sustainable use of AI can only be possible if its applications in healthcare, education, genetics and lots of these fields that impact day to day human processes – also advances nearly at the same pace as the field of AI itself.