Chapter 3: What is AI? of interaction that are more natural, such as speaking to an assistant. AI- enabled educational systems will be desirable in part due to their ability to support more natural interactions during teaching and learning. In classic edtech platforms, the ways in which teachers and students interact with edtech are limited. Teachers and students may choose items from a menu or in a multiple-choice question. They may type short answers. They may drag objects on the screen or use touch gestures. The computer provides outputs to students and teachers through text, graphics, and multimedia. Although these forms of inputs and outputs are versatile, no one would mistake this style of interaction with the way two people interact with one another; it is specific to humancomputer interaction. With AI, interactions with computers are likely to become more like human-to-human interactions (see Figure 4). A teacher may speak to an AI assistant, and it may speak back. A student may make a drawing, and the computer may highlight a portion of the drawing. A teacher or student may start to write something, and the computer may finish their sentence— as when today’s email programs can complete thoughts faster than we can type them. Additionally, the possibilities for automated actions that can be executed by AI tools are expanding. Current personalization tools may automatically adjust the sequence, pace, hints, or trajectory through learning experiences. Actions in the future might look like an AI system or tool that helps a student with homework or a teaching assistant that reduces a teacher’s workload by recommending lesson plans that fit a teacher’s needs and are similar to lesson plans a teacher previously liked. Further, an AIenabled assistant may appear as an additional “partner” in a small P a g e | 26
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