Giving Compass' Take:

• Writing for Futurity, Matt Shipman presents an example of artificial intelligence's ability to accurately pinpoint the progress of individual students.

• Are you prepared to support technological advancements in education? How could this discovery inspire the development of similar innovations in learning?

• Learn more about how AI is improving education.

A new artificial intelligence model can better predict how much students are learning in educational games, researchers report.

The improved model makes use of an artificial intelligence (AI) training concept called multitask learning, an approach in which one model is asked to perform multiple tasks.

The new model could help to improve both instruction and learning outcomes.

The researchers found that the multitask model was about 10% more accurate than other models that relied on conventional AI training methods.

“We envision this type of model being used in a couple of ways that can benefit students,” says first author Michael Geden, a postdoctoral researcher. “It could be used to notify teachers when a student’s gameplay suggests the student may need additional instruction. It could also be used to facilitate adaptive gameplay features in the game itself. For example, altering a storyline in order to revisit the concepts that a student is struggling with."

“This also opens the door to incorporating more complex modeling techniques into educational software—particularly educational software that adapts to the needs of the student,” says Andrew Emerson, coauthor of the paper and a PhD student.

Read the full article about artificial intelligence by Matt Shipman at Futurity.