AI will help to elaborate individual trajectories for teaching schoolchildren

Newswise — Scientists from Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University worked out a system of artificial intellect, that analyzes information about academic performance and tracks which themes is pupil good or bad at, which educative skills he lacks and which tasks bring him into stressful condition. Automatic system processes information and can give recommendations to a teacher, parents or a pupil himself. It will help to improve the academic performance of each pupil and teach him to use his strengths in the process of study. The results of the research, supported by the program “Priority -2020” of Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, are published in magazine Informatics and Education.

In school a teacher is not always able to devote attention to every pupil, if he has difficulties with some tasks. Schoolchildren often face difficulties by making some exercises or particular types of exercises, in that case they have to study this theme with parents or tutors, or leave it undone. This problem can be solved by introduction of systems on the base of artificial intellect (AI) into the educational process. Such algorithm will give quick feedback to a teacher about amount of learned material, gives parents the whole picture of academic performance of their child and its condition, and possibility for a pupil to study this theme individually.

Scientists from Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University elaborated algorithm of artificial intellect, that on the base of specialized psychological tests, makes the psychological portrait of a pupil, that takes into account his type of temperament, level of IQ, type of nervous system and a special marker, suggested by authors of the research and named briefly ECEF. Elementary Cognitive Educational Functions include memory, attention focusing and concentration, and also visual searching. Practically all exercises can be decomposed into such simple cognitive functions.

If you know what a pupil is good or bad at, you can exercise and thus improve his academic performance. The system gives a student some recommendations how he can improve weak ECEF, and precisely advises particular kinds of extracurricular activities: participation in clubs, classes and other activities. For example, it is known that chess trains memory and ability to focus attention, and regular sport exercises improve visual search and attention.

Besides this, AI with the help of smartwatch will be able to analyze physical parameters of a pupil during the lesson: control pulse, breathing, ocular movements and time of reaction. That enables to make conclusion about stressful condition of a pupil and reasons of its origin. Authors suggest to make tests with the use of electroencephalography in all education institutions to estimate pupils’ brain activity. During EEG a pupil will be given a special test on development of ECEF, and also on themes he has studied, and analyze work of memory, effectiveness of acquisition of information, frequency of mistakes.

Having gathered all this information and analyzed it, the system will give individual recommendations to a pupil and his parents, also give a teacher a picture of information acquisition in all class and form recommendations, which themes have to be repeated or explained in other way.

“Inschooltex” fulfils the education of the system, in order it can analyze the results of EEG by itself, give detailed recommendations and integrate in educational program.

The potential of use of this model is very wide. It can be used at schools, institutes, programs of professional training and in the process of learning for a new job in the course of career. This educational model with the help of artificial intellect is universal and doesn’t depend on age of a student, or on the kind of knowledge he must acquire.

Since 2023 this model is experimentally used in lyceum №23 in Kaliningrad and Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University. Also this model was used in some Moscow schools under the support of “Inschooltex”. The pilot place in Moscow has become school-laboratory “New View”. The experiment still is being conducted partially: condition of students is not studied directly during a lesson, but they pass EEG every six months. During EEG they have to do some tests for estimating their psychological portrait and ECEF, and during this process their cognitive processes are studied and handled by artificial intellect. The first recommendations parents of the participants will get in September 2023.

“We conducted our experiment among students of 3-5 classes, and plan to involve the older ones. Our plan is to check our model on all age groups, including students of the university. Further we want to spread this idea also on the additional education. In future we would like our system to be used in all schools of Russia. To our opinion, it would be very useful in general for improvement of educational level. Of course, this process is not a fast one. At first, we need to try this system on different educational platforms, that we exactly are doing now in collaboration with our partner “Inschooltex”, to spread it, and then think about nationwide perspectives”, – tells the realizer of the project Semen Kurkin Dr. Sci.in Physics and Mathematics, leading scientific associate of the Centre of Neurotechnologies and Machine Education.