The Rising Use and Impact of Technology in Education

As technologies such as artificial intelligence and blockchain continue to disrupt all sectors, the education sector included, we sat down with Sarah Daly, XpertLearning’s EdTech Director, to delve deeper into her insights on the impact of these technologies on educational institutions.

Sarah Daly has more than 20 years of experience working with EdTech, during which she has worked both within a Higher and Professional Education consulting setting, including working with some of the leading organizations in the region.

 

Q: How would you describe your current role?

A: My role involves any of the solutions we have in place under the XpertLearning portfolio, which fall into the Edtech sector, such as K12, higher education, and continuing professional education. In my role, I’m responsible for vendor relation management, positioning the products, and working with the vendors to meet the localization requirements for this region. And I guess a big part of my responsibility is ensuring that those products become relevant for this market.

Q: And what types of organizations would you say you have worked with so far in your role?

A: A real variety – Federal and Private Education institutions, Ministries and more latterly with Corporate CPD organizations.  We predominantly started working in the UAE, but in the last few years we’ve spread out to working more across the GCC and we’re seeing much more focus in Saudi Arabia and the other GCC countries now. Our clients range from leading education organizations to ministries and federal and private education institutions.

EdTech

Q: What kind of solutions do you offer these clients?

A: We’ve got a range of ed-tech solutions aligned to the sector. We’ve got a suite of solutions around learning management and student information systems, and we also offer solutions that are based on blockchain technology, which support life-long learning through the provision of digital micro-credentials, certificates and badging. We also provide learning content, both custom and off the shelf, for K12 and higher education.

But what’s more interesting than that is what you do with these solutions, and that’s where we really help. For example, the learning management system is a vessel for learning content and most organizations have had those in place for a number of years in some capacity. But actually, what we’re spending more time on now, is supporting institutions with how we can really make those learning management systems sync to underpin the Teaching and Learning experience.  So, we’re interested in working with our vendors as to how we can meet emerging learning needs for Middle East clients through the use of additional features.

Yes, we offer learning management systems and student information systems, but we’re now seeing a lot more conversations around some of the newer technologies that would finesse those solutions.

Q: One of the learning solutions you provide is built on blockchain, why is that important in the education industry?

A: One of the newer solutions that we have in our portfolio is a digital credentialing solution, which is based on the Hyperledger Fabric Blockchain framework. We’ve got a growing client base who utilize that software to provide a passport of qualifications to learners.  The dominant business reason for that solution gaining traction is to ensure the security and the validity of credentials that are being published by the institution. The student population and workforce today, particularly in the Middle East, is so geographically mobile, whether that’s due to students moving between countries as they complete their education, or employees moving to take up new opportunities, therefore we need to ensure that a learner can gain their validated credential from an institution and be able to share it with a relevant new school, employer, government organization or network easily and securely. A solution secured by blockchain, ensures the authenticity.

Q: What are the newer technologies that can finesse learning solutions other than blockchain?

A: The word that everybody always mentions is AI. In reality, most of the learning solutions that we provide have a layer of AI or machine learning natively embedded into them. So, whether that is around surfacing relevant content or providing personalized trending content based on how a learner is engaged in the learning management systems, it’s all fairly common technology that we’re seeing now in our baseline solutions.

But now we’re looking a lot more around how we can inject AI to complete discreet activities which add value.  I love the term ‘injectable AI’ which I heard at a recent vendor partner conference as it allows a client to try out options without compromising the baseline solution. There are many examples of how AI can be injected, whether that be a plugin that helps in finessing content creation, the generation of an examination or questionnaire out of a piece of learning content, or proctoring solutions that use AI rather than just the generic ‘lockdown browser’ type solution that used to be on the market. That’s what we’re starting to look at now.

The big example that was characteristic of the use of AI a couple of years back was chatbot type functions that you integrate with your work. That’s great but not always supportive of the learning journey. But now we’re looking at what the relevant applications that we can plug into the solution so that AI will actually support the learning journey, replacing the AI vanity projects, just to say that we’ve got AI in the solution.

It’s those pieces around the edges of our core systems where we’re starting to find that we’ve got some really interesting technology that is supporting and underpinning our systems to make them different than competitors. And it’s also making the learning solutions more relevant and better for the constituents who are using it.

Education Technology

Q: And when it comes to the use of AI or blockchain, are you talking about systems that already have these built-in or are you talking about plug-ins? What is more common?

A: What’s more interesting now is around injectable AI. That would be where a vendor solution doesn’t build out the AI themselves. Let’s face it, AI is moving very, very fast at the moment. Some of our vendors have partnered with solutions that offer these solutions as part of the product, even though they don’t proprietarily own them, they are bundled with the software.

As far as the education institutions are concerned, they could purchase these plug-ins through us as part of their learning solution if the vendor has partnered with an AI company. There’s also an entire marketplace that allows institutions to plug AI into their solutions. It has to be the right one though. And this is one of our big offerings in XpertLearning. We’ve always had more of a consultative approach with how we solution software to our vendors and clients to give them the freedom of choice around the solutions more suitable for their needs.

Q: Can you list the top uses of AI plug-ins today that you have seen most clients ask for?
A:
Certainly, the one that we’re definitely seeing more of is the use of AI in the proctoring process. This is where you’ve got a virtual classroom with learners undertaking an examination. The proctoring software has become much more sophisticated in the way it works, utilizing AI to ensure that there’s no cheating or impersonation going on and reducing the reliance on tutors freeing up their time. So that would be one of the uses that I’ve seen.

The other one that we have seen quite a lot is around where you would take AI and embed it in the course design process. This is where a tutor might generate a new course in the LMS and use AI to generate a quiz out of the learning content rather than coming up with the 25 quiz questions and answers themselves. That’s what I would consider to be targeted use of AI in the learning process rather than a chatbot in the corner that says, ‘How can I help you?’.

Q: From your experience, what are the biggest drivers that make academic institutions want to have a learning solution or an AI-based learning solution?

A: The majority of LMSs aren’t new. So, if we look at the LMSs in the Higher Ed market – the same top 4 have been in place for many years and having a learning management system in your organization as an education institution is a given.

There’s a fairly mixed use of the systems in a number of institutions. There’s a really sophisticated use of learning management systems in some of the institutions, but quite a rudimentary use in others. So there’s still loads we can do in terms of our commitment to the sector and supporting our prospects and clients. Now, we are looking more into elevating the experience both for the staff and learners to ensure that the learning experience they’re getting through their virtual learning environment is suitable for 2024.

Q: And, in your point of view, what are the biggest challenges that make some organizations have only a rudimentary use of learning solutions?

A: It’s multi-faceted. It depends on the size of an institution and can also depend on the subjects they teach, whether they do a lot of chalk-talk-type subjects, more research subjects, or lab-based work. The second reason is always around where it sits in the layer of priorities for an institution and if there is funding available to be able to do it. And the third reason that we hear is ‘time’.

Q: And how can institutions best overcome these challenges?
A: One of the best ways to overcome these challenges is where we’ve got a champion in an institution who is looking to enhance the teaching and learning experience. They might come from a different organization, it may be due to the criteria of the region they’re working in, or it may be about the competitiveness of the organization.

Q: Are there any parting words you’d like to share with our audience?

A: Not really parting words, just to voice how much I enjoy the sector I work in, improving the digital experience by introducing new technologies to organizations and supporting the associated change.   I look forward to the next stage of XpertLearning supporting the ambitious growth within the Education sector across the region.

 

Leverage Technology for Your Educational Institution

These were the insights we’ve gained talking to Sarah, the EdTech Director at XpertLearning. If you’re interested in learning more about how our high-tech solutions can help elevate your students’ learning experience, explore our academic solutions or schedule a demo with any of our Xperts.

 

 

Get in Touch

    getintouch

    Pin It on Pinterest