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Summary:
The increase in online education has allowed a new type of teacher to emerge -- an artificial one. But just how accepting students are of an artificial instructor remains to be seen. That's why researchers are working to examine student perceptions of artificial intelligence-based teachers.
The increase in online education has allowed a new type of teacher to emerge an artificial one. But just how accepting students are of an artificial instructor remains to be seen.
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| AI teaching assistants can help ease a teacher’s workload, such as by responding to commonly asked questions by students. Photo credit: Photo: Adobe Stock |
That's why researchers at the University of Central Florida's Nicholson School of Communication and Media are working to examine student perceptions of artificial intelligence-based teachers.
Some of their findings, published recently in the International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, indicate that for students to accept an AI teaching assistant, it needs to be effective and easy to talk to.
The hope is that by understanding how students relate to AI-teachers, engineers and computer scientists can design them to easily integrate into the education experience, says Jihyun Kim, an associate professor in the school and lead author of the study...
An example of an AI teaching assistant is one named Jill Watson that was created by a researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Jill was fed the thousands of questions and answers commonly asked in the researcher's online class that he'd taught over the years. With some additional learning and tweaks, Jill was eventually able to answer the students' commonly asked questions accurately without any human assistance as if she was one of the researcher's human teaching assistants.
Additional resources
Journal Reference:
- Jihyun Kim, Kelly Merrill Jr., Kun Xu, Deanna D. Sellnow. My Teacher Is a Machine: Understanding Students’ Perceptions of AI Teaching Assistants in Online Education. International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction, 2020; 1 DOI: 10.1080/10447318.2020.1801227
Story Source:
Materials provided by University of Central Florida. Original written by Robert Wells, Science Writer at University of Central Florida.Source: Science Daily
