From Chalkboards to Smart Boards: Teaching Pedagogy in the Age of AI.

 

The scratching sound of the blackboard, which once captivated the students and made them scribble notes in their books, is now shifting to the sounds of notifications and images. This is not just a simple message notification, but a significant update that is transforming academia, ushering in a new way for teachers and students to engage with education.  Remember the blackboards, with white chalk and how they turned white with black markers, these boards of deep engagement are undergoing a massive shift. The monopoly is threatened by the new elephant in the room, that is Artificial Intelligence (AI).

The teacher now goes to the classroom with a laptop, students open their tablets, and voila, a new classroom of the 21^st century is here. Books are giving way to e-books, and education is not heavy anymore. Writing on the board, an interface of human and technology is creating space for animated learning, vivid visual diagrams and other handouts, not with a bang but with a simple click. The question that confronts academia is two-fold: pedagogy and syllabi.

The question seems to grow larger and more challenging for academicians regarding the pedagogy that can cater to students in the age of AI. Consider the situation: a Professor takes up a difficult subject in class, while the student instantly connects online, understands the nitty-gritty, and grasps the concepts that they understand. There lies the difference, the teacher is discussing the knowledge creation, and on the other hand, the student is focusing on the information accumulation. There lies a fundamental difference in the class today. The students prone to online exposure are in the mythic belief that the knowledge system can be replicated through the online-generated AI models. Industry requirements are a combination of skills and personality, which modern universities focus on in their syllabi.

This leads us to another challenge, that is, the role of curricula and syllabi in Universities and colleges. In the class, student looks at the syllabus and assess their engagement with the subject. As the student browses the subject, s/he views the texts written in the past through the lenses of today. The texts are equally relevant today but is there a need to make generative AI an equal participant in teaching methodologies. Public Universities and Colleges, need to revamp their infrastructure, creating space for technology in the classrooms. To take the students away from mobile phones, the boards would have to adapt to modern-day screens. Teacher training programs need to promote such activities to balance the gap between tradition and modernity.

Reflecting on the issue, the duality of tradition and modernity is the way forward, especially in the current scenario. The student who comes from an immersive digital experience, at times, finds it challenging to engage with effective methods of traditional learning and evaluation. The classrooms, rooted in boards, need to equip themselves with the challenges of modern learning. In the age of post-truth, education is the only aspect which can carve a society rooted in social engagement and progress. Thus, in the transformative times, the education system needs to find a balance between the established methods that have paid rich dividends over the ages and make space for the new ones.