Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already beginning to touch many facets of our day to day lives. From healthcare to social media to financial services, AI is revolutionising our society in many subtle, and some less subtle, ways. While the world of academia is often steeped in history and tradition, it too will be transformed by the development of artificial intelligence. Indeed, the educational landscape is one of the key areas in which AI can truly create new and exciting opportunities for students, researchers, educators and support staff.  

So how exactly will AI change the face of academia as we know it, and what opportunities will arise from further technological developments in this field? Let’s take a look at 5 of the key ways that AI is transforming academia.  

1. Personalised Learning 

Personalisation has been an abiding trend in the marketing and start up spheres, but perhaps surprisingly, universities are also in on the action. Using AI to analyse student data, universities are already delivering personalised learning content and this trend will continue in the future. Utilising artificial intelligence will allow universities to offer learning platforms that reflect the different needs, skills and accommodations of each student, embracing the diversity of the student body and recognising different learning styles. Using AI in this way will give students the opportunity to improve their academic performance by targeting the areas they need more assistance with while allowing for opportunities to learn in their own pace and style. 

2. Teaching and Curriculum Development 

Utilising artificial intelligence in an academic context will also empower educators to develop enhanced teaching strategies and curricula. Using artificial intelligence to analyse student performance data, educators can develop alternative learning pathways in areas where students typically struggle. Academics can also be given a further boost from improvements and recommendations given by artificial intelligence systems to enhance their learning plans and curricula. This can range from identifying the best materials available use, real-time updates based on new research and insights, or regular reviews based on the analysis of real-time student data.  

3. Administration Automation 

A 2019 Ofsted survey suggested that teachers spend around 31% of their working week on marking, planning and administrative tasks leading to chronic overwork. We have already seen how artificial intelligence will assist with the planning and development of teaching plans and curricula. Artificial intelligence will allow educators to delegate the administrative burden of tasks such as scheduling, record-keeping, registrations, student progress reports and other organisational and administration tasks to artificial intelligence systems, freeing up time and energy and reducing academic workloads.  

4. Grading and Feedback 

Grading and feedback takes a lot of time, and it’s not just the academic staff who suffer. The Tab reported in 2021 about some of the mental and emotional anguish experienced by university students forced to wait months to receive coursework grades and feedback. Artificial Intelligence will transform academic by lifting the burden of grading and feedback off of educators and onto automated systems. While automation is already currently used to mark multiple choice papers, and artificial intelligence enabled plagiarism scanners are already commonplace, the utilisation of image and text recognition systems will allow students to submit coursework to an AI-enabled platform to be automatically graded. These platforms can also provide feedback suggestions or highlight areas to review for markers, vastly reducing the amount of time taken to mark papers and reducing the anxiety of students waiting for their grades.  

5. Using Block Chain & AI Together 

Combining block chain and AI technologies together will add further features to the future transformations we will see in the academic sphere in the near future. As noted by Professors Nafis Alam and Graham Kendall in The Conversation, using block chain and artificial intelligence together has the potential to allow higher education institutions to automate the recognition and transfer of university credits, opening up the possibility of accruing credits across universities in a much more seamless way than we currently see, offering students and academics a greater breadth of opportunity.  

Another potential advantage would be in registering and tracking intellectual property rights arising from academic research, notarising copyright at publication and enhancing the efficacy and accuracy of impact assessments. This will shine a light on the true influence and impact that academic research has across sectors while readily providing evidence and cases for funding applications. 

Scottish AI Summit

All in all, the transformation of academia by artificial intelligence is well underway and reaping results. But further opportunities to revolutionise higher education and research is on the horizon, ultimately enhancing the quality of academic output and benefiting students, researchers, educators and the institutions themselves.  

Want to continue the conversation? The Potential for AI to Disrupt Education is just one of the many topical and thought-provoking panels at the year’s Scottish AI Summit. Are large language models like ChatGPT a cheating tool or an opportunity to redefine what academic engagement looks like? Get involved with this, as well as a host of international speakers, panels, workshops and more over two jam packed days in Glasgow.  

Join us, and join the conversation on AI in Scotland, at the Scottish AI Summit this March 28-29.