Can a machine really make learning personal?

If we had a 1 to 1 ratio of teachers to students, we'd simply match up each student with the one teacher who's best suited to their needs. And if time, money, and leadership support were unlimited, we could solve the problem with brute force. And if some magical new technology could eliminate all these obstacles, that would be even sweeter. One of my favorite quotes about technology comes from science fiction writer Arthur C Clarke. Any technology that is sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic. Fortunately for us, this magic has been done before. Let's look at an example of AI enabled personalized learning in a college course. So in a college class at Georgia Tech University, a teaching assistant or TA is often available to answer questions, clarify assignments, and support individuals outside of class. We'll call this TA Jill. Now, Jill is so good at those tasks that the students nominate them for best TA award at the end of the term. That's when they find out that Jill is really a chatbot, programmed to engage in unique conversations with each student based on their performance in class and the questions that they posed. No wonder Jill's students were so impressed by her performance. She never gets tired, never sleeps, never forgets their name, and is an absolute expert in the content covered in class. While educational chatbots like Jill are more common today, back in 2015, when Professor Gold decided to embed Jill in his class, not many people thought chatbots could transform the learning experience. Which brings me to my second favorite quote by Clarke. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little beyond the limits of the possible. As soon as I heard about Jill, I started building similar bots for my corporate training clients. Of course, it was a lot easier for me. The limits of the possible had already been updated. Still, I continued to be surprised by how few instructional designers were taking advantage of this new technology. Pause this video for a moment and think about how you might use a similar approach in your work. Where do your learners need guidance or coaching? What do you wish you could do for them if only you had unlimited resources and staffing? While a chatbot isn't the only way to deliver personalized learning, it's an option that would have been considered impossible or impossibly expensive only a few years ago. But with the explosion of large language models and generative AI, we can now create learning experiences like prepare and grade a written quiz or an oral exam that is uniquely challenging for each person in your class based on their individual performance and progress. Or translate your content into any language in the world in a few minutes. And track every user's performance, capture group trends and identify improvements based on where the individual struggle to master your content. You might be wondering if you have to be a programmer to build something this powerful for your learners. See, that's where the magic comes in. One of the most interesting things about working with generative AI is that simple human language is also our programming language. So to build hyper customized learning programs with AI, all you need to do is talk to it.