Page 34 - EW-June-2025

Expert Comment

AI-driven learning

an urgent imperative

YOGI KOCHHAR

N A WORLD WHERE CHANGE IS THE ONLY con- The traditional model of education is
stant, school education is at a critical crossroads. Con-
temporary Indian pedagogies unchanged for decades slow, linear and unable to cope with
Ihave become redundant, forcing teachers and students quantum technology leap. It is useful
to flog a dead horse. While the world charges ahead with
innovation, our classrooms are tethered to outdated syl- as heritage but not as a future skill.
labi and rigid structures. But there’s hope — AI (artificial Metacognition is the new foundation for
intelligence)-driven pedagogies are ready to enter and trans-
form teaching-learning in India’s schools. learning
In China, AI-driven teaching-learning has been intro-
duced from class I. This bold initiative signals a radical shift nents:
in global education strategy. It signals belated awareness Computer vision. Capability to direct machines to see,
that children learn to know; now they must learn to apply detect, and interpret visual data.
knowledge. Today, a child need not learn Mandarin to speak Interactive AI. Capability to design systems that under-
it — AI apps can help her converse fluently, breaking the stand and respond to voice, gestures, and emotion.
barriers of conventional teaching-learning. The goalposts Metaverse AI. Capability to create immersive, virtual ex-
have moved from teaching to doing, from information to periences that blend education with simulation.
innovation. Spatial AI. Capability to enable machines to understand
The traditional model of education — teaching→learning and navigate the physical world in 3D.
knowing→doing — resembles an obsolete ladder. It’s slow, The future belongs to students who can innovate from
linear, and unable to cope with the quantum technology within education institutions. AI empowers them to become
leap. It’s tantamount to teaching a child to build a fire from intrapreneurs — problem solvers who understand technol-
scratch in a world replete with electric stoves. This is use- ogy and apply it to reimagine their environments. Using AI,
ful as heritage, but not as a future skill. Similarly, students students can create products such as LMS, AI tutors and
need not be burdened with memorising maps and formulae lesson plans, chatbots, voice assistants, content and course
when they can be instantly accessed on their smartphones. optimisation road maps.
Metacognition is the new foundation for learning in an era I’s role in education is expansive and essential to create
when students are spending six-plus hours on their mobile Aintelligent learning systems. Schools that host AI labs
phone screens that has pruned their attention spans to 2-3 are not just adding a facility — they’re sowing the seeds of
seconds. Students need to be pulled out of this rabbit hole. a smarter, self-evolving institution. They’re allowing stu-
Tomorrow’s education requires nurturing children’s ob- dents to develop portfolios of real-world AI-driven proj-
servation, creativity, and application skills. What if, instead ects, developing a generation that thinks beyond exams and
of reading about tectonic plates or balancing equations, stu- textbooks.
dents use AI to model future cities and develop eco-friendly In the new age of AI and machine learning, school educa-
alternatives to plastics? What if schools moved beyond class- tion has to advance beyond syllabus revisions and digital
rooms and textbooks to AI labs where imagination meets whiteboards. It requires radical rethinking about what to
real-world problems and solutions? learn. Applied learning through AI is no longer optional —
Power of the AI Lab. At the heart of this transformation it’s imperative.
is the AI Lab. They are not dispensers of coding or robotics, An African proverb aptly captures the urgency to switch
but creative innovation hubs where students engage with quickly to AI-driven pedagogies: “Every morning in Africa,
applied intelligence above algorithms and servers. AI isn’t a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the
about machines; it’s about bending machines to students’ fastest lion, or it will be killed. Every morning, a lion wakes
wills. up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or
Established under the aegis of the AI Leaders Board, it will starve. It doesn’t matter whether you’re the lion or a
USA, the Dataviv Applied AI Lab initiative, for instance, has gazelle — when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.”
already shown how students in class VI can solve real-world For school promoters more than for teachers, the sun
problems — expertise hitherto expected from engineering has risen. It’s time to run to introduce AI-powered, pur-
graduates. In an AI Lab, a biology student can now dissect pose-driven, student-centred education. Teachers too will
a frog using metaverse AI. The burden of reasoning and be condemned to flog the dead horse of conventional peda-
logic has shifted to ChatGPT that has emerged as the next gogies unless they take this message to their employers.
bionic assistant in the manner that the calculator appeared
on exam tables. (A former Microsoft (India) director, Yogi Yogi Kochhar is the author of the
An effective school AI Lab should have four key compo- two-volume The Road Ahead 2.0 (2025))

34 EDUCATIONWORLD JUNE 2025