AI will teach this class a lesson, but it won’t hang in the teachers’ lounge
Instead of virtual classrooms with human teachers, the latest course at David Game College in London brings a virtual teacher into a real classroom. The private school is hosting the UK’s first AI lesson as part of its new Sabrewing programme. The first lesson will see 20 GCSE students take part in the educational experiment, which will rely on AI platforms and virtual reality headsets to guide their learning in place of human teachers.
The AI system is designed to personalize education through AI. The Sabrewing AI model (named after the Sabrewing hummingbird to emphasize speed and agility) assesses each student’s strengths and weaknesses and adjusts lesson plans to match them. The idea is to spend more time on areas where the student needs the most help, while their strengths are added to the study list later. This is supposed to make each student better in all areas.
Students at David Game College, whose families pay around £27,000 a year to attend, won’t be entirely deprived of human tutors during Sabrewing classes. Three so-called “learning coaches” are on hand to monitor behaviour and support lesson plans. They also supplement the AI as tutors in subjects where the technology isn’t up to the task, such as art lessons and sex education.
“The Sabrewing program is fascinating,” said Rudolf Eliott Lockhart, Chief Executive of the Independent Schools Association, in a statement. “Using AI to drive an adaptive approach to learning has the potential to be a real game-changer and at David Game College we want to underpin this innovative approach with serious educational expertise.”
Educational AI
David Game isn’t the first school to see generative AI as a boon to higher education. Arizona State University (ASU) has appointed ChatGPT to its faculty in many ways. ASU and OpenAI partnered to create a version of the AI chatbot that can help students in hundreds of ways. Currently, ChatGPT helps write academic papers, simulates patients for healthcare students, and assists in designing and recruiting participants for research studies.
The school is excited about how the AI will serve the needs of each student rather than a one-size-fits-all classroom. The administrators believe that will eventually be proven by testing and other metrics. Of course, relying on AI to teach raises questions about whether it will work as promised or what the school might lack in terms of social and emotional development without teachers to serve as role models and mentors. Either way, it’s easy to believe that if the AI classroom experiment is successful, it will be replicated elsewhere as soon as possible.