A few years ago, one of the numerous development IT projects I was working on involved a Physical Education Biometric Measurements System for students. During a meeting with one of the PE teachers, he said something that I still remember: his goal as a teacher was to take at least one overweight, unfit elementary school student, potentially heading for a heart attack after age 40, and change the student’s life trajectory getting him off that path and on to one of lifelong fitness and exercise. Even one successful case would be enough for him to fulfill his goal in life: giving something useful back to the world.

At the meeting, I asked him how he would know how unfit a student was so as to be able to predict the extent of any health danger posed and accordingly the extent of any remedial action. He could not confidently answer that. 

An AI system with Machine Learning could. Given enough input data like student age, gender, weight, body-mass index, biometric readings and so on, along with related health outcomes at later ages, an AI system could very accurately predict potential health risks allowing for timely, decisive, lifesaving interventions.

In the same way, applying Machine Learning to predict students’ academic performance based on student profiles and related outcomes would significantly enhance educational services by allowing for focused and timely learning path interventions on a personalized basis.

In conjunction with the above, country specific concerns like truancy rates could be predicted, as well as predictions relating to many other dimensions of the educational process as a whole.

But that would only be the start, as all of the above would have to be part of a strategic plan that would involve simultaneously addressing numerous aspects of the learning process so as to guarantee long-term sustainability, the key to success. Education’s future should not be about adopting technology in education as is, but changing education itself through fusion with cutting edge AI technology in order to create better learning outcomes which are objectively measurable.