Will AI Make In-Person Learning Obsolete?
When Maureen Wittmann first recruited me to teach for Homeschool Connections in 2009, I thought the idea was a bit crazy. “Education that is entirely online?” I thought. “That’s too weird ever to take off!”
Fast forward fifteen years, and almost every educational institution, from public schools to colleges to homeschool curriculum providers, has integrated online components into their educational programs at every level. Not only is online education no longer considered a crazy idea, it has become fairly universal. While this has certainly not done away with in-person education, it has revolutionized our thoughts on education.
With the advent of generative AI, educators are again wondering to what degree this new technology will displace traditional in-person styles of education. A global survey last year found that 60% of parents and educators are ambivalent or unwilling to trust AI. Similarly, 71% are concerned about the risks. Many worry that access to these sophisticated generative programs displaces the need for in-person education with a real human being.
Homeschool families grapple with these questions, pondering how the traditional aspects of their education might evolve. Could the image of a homeschool mom sitting at the table, helping her child work through problems with a physical book and sheet of paper, become a relic of a bygone era? Might field trips to battle sites and museums fade in popularity when AI-generated images and videos offer lavish reconstructions from the comfort of home? And what about students meeting in person at a homeschool co-op to discuss literature? Will that become as outdated as washer-women sharing gossip around the village?
While AI is undoubtedly changing how we think about education, face-to-face education is unlikely to go away anytime soon. Here’s why:
Social and Emotional Learning
Learning isn’t simply about what information is communicated. It is also about social and emotional development. In-person interactions are crucial for developing skills like communication, collaboration, and empathy, which are challenging to replicate solely through technology. And there are some teaching tasks that lean into interpersonal interactions where AI will not offer much benefit. Direct, personal feedback and reinforcement will still be necessary for many subjects and tasks.
Instructor Adaptation
One of the greatest assets provided by parents, teachers, and tutors is their ability to assess individual children’s needs and adjust instruction in real time, something that AI currently struggles to do effectively. For example, when lecturing to a group of students, I can pick up on very subtle cues from their comments and body language that tell me whether I am getting through or losing them. I can make incremental adjustments in what I am doing to react to this microfeedback. Parents do the same thing when working through a lesson with a child; your child’s body language tells you plainly whether they are tracking—body language that is unique to them. This sort of ability to adapt and adjust to scarcely perceptible cues is lacking in current AI models.
Student Motivation
Finally, regardless of how well an AI model can spit out information, there will always be a certain lack of engagement with an AI instructor. Children respond very positively to the support of their parents and instructors. One of the many motivations for academic success is the student’s desire to make their parent or teacher “proud” of them through their success. A child responds better to their education if they know the persons behind it are truly invested in their well-being and care about them as persons. Obviously, this is lacking in AI instruction. The AI doesn’t care about the student in any sense. It doesn’t care if the child comprehends the material or whether the child even exists at all.
Real-Life Instruction is Here to Stay
As AI models advance, students and educators will inevitably find ways to incorporate them into the learning experience. I already see students making admirable use of AI by asking ChatGPT to explain complicated concepts to them at their level of understanding, as well as using it to generate outlines and prompts for written assignments. However, actual in-person education will not be going away anytime soon.
People once predicted that radios and VHS tapes were the end of education as well. After all, why not just record one lesson on VHS and play the tape to all the students instead of lecturing in real life? While both technologies were adapted to the classroom, neither displaced real-life interaction. Similarly, parents, students, and educators will certainly adapt to AI. However, education will always retain a personal dimension that a computer cannot replicate.
What are your thoughts on this topic? Join me and other homeschooling parents at our Homeschool Connections Community or our Facebook group to continue the discussion!
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is part of a series on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Homeschooling.
