Education Law

The demise of teachers?

It sounds like a page out of 2001: A Space Odyssey or some other wacky concept movie from the 80s (does anyone else remember Short Circuit?), but this story that came to us by way of CNN.com really got BoardBuzz thinking. It seems that an enterprising PhD student, Jacob Whitehill, has created a robot teacher. Yes, you read that right.

The teaching robots, or, Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) are computer systems that provide personalized instruction and feedback to students without human intervention.

Using facial expression recognition -- which allows a computer to react according to expressions a user makes, Whitehill made a video change speed by altering his expression.

Say what? BoardBuzz is amazed (and a little frightened -- we saw AI and I, Robot).

"Classical ITS typically have a somewhat rigid architecture of 'first I ask a question; then I wait for a response; then I talk some more; then I wait for another response.' Facial expression recognition, I believe, will allow the feedback from student to teacher to happen while the robot teacher is talking," Whitehill said.

Experts agree the latest developments in ITS open a plethora of new possibilities for how people could learn. The consensus among most is that further advancements in active, participatory systems, is where the future lies.

University of Memphis researcher, Dr Andrew Olney, who recently received a US$1.3 million grant to develop an ITS called Guru, said the key to future learning will be enabling interactive, one-on-one instruction.

"The technology can facilitate these more advanced learning scenarios," he said.

Although robot teachers of varying abilities have existed for more than 30 years, ITS developments such as Whitehill's and Olney's are pushing beliefs that robots could soon be as effective -- if not more effective -- than human teachers.

"The ITS which have been developed are already better teachers than people who have no experience," Olney said.

So, what is the future for today's teachers, classrooms, and textbooks?

What is the future, indeed. It certainly sounds as if this offers a lot of potential for classrooms, but BoardBuzz wonders if "human" teachers ever will be obsolete. What do you think? Leave a comment and tell us about it.

Full post as published by BoardBuzz: NSBA's Daily Weblog on August 07, 2008 (boomark / email).