KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI) is head­ing in­to more sec­ondary school class­rooms this aca­d­e­m­ic year, with Forms One and Two stu­dents get­ting ac­cess to an AI-pow­ered tu­tor called “Chris.”

The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion yes­ter­day launched its ex­pand­ed AI-en­hanced learn­ing ini­tia­tive across six sub­ject ar­eas, in­clud­ing Math­e­mat­ics, So­cial Stud­ies and In­te­grat­ed Sci­ence, giv­ing stu­dents ac­cess to an in­ter­ac­tive avatar that can an­swer ques­tions, ex­plain dif­fi­cult con­cepts and help them work through lessons.

The avatar will form part of dig­i­tal learn­ing ma­te­r­i­al which al­so in­cludes flip­books, videos, in­ter­ac­tive ac­tiv­i­ties and sim­u­la­tions.

And un­like gen­er­al AI plat­forms, min­istry of­fi­cials say “Chris” has been trained specif­i­cal­ly on cur­ricu­lum-aligned con­tent and has guardrails de­signed to keep stu­dents fo­cused on their school­work.

Over time, the tech­nol­o­gy is al­so ex­pect­ed to adapt to the learn­ing needs of in­di­vid­ual stu­dents, even­tu­al­ly us­ing stu­dents’ in­ter­ests such as crick­et or foot­ball to make ex­pla­na­tions more re­lat­able.

Dur­ing yes­ter­day’s launch held at the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion head­quar­ters in Port-of-Spain, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath said the avatar would pro­vide stu­dents with ad­di­tion­al help out­side of the tra­di­tion­al class­room for­mat.

“We are es­tab­lish­ing a sus­tain­able mod­el through which dig­i­tal con­tent can be re­leased, re­viewed, up­dat­ed and ex­pand­ed across sub­jects and form lev­els. A cen­tral fea­ture of the plat­form is the AI avatar. The avatar serves as an in­ter­ac­tive learn­ing as­sis­tant. Stu­dents can use it to seek an­oth­er ex­pla­na­tion, re­vis­it a dif­fi­cult con­cept, ask a ques­tion, un­der­take guid­ed re­vi­sion, or work through prac­tice ac­tiv­i­ties. Its pur­pose is not mere­ly to pro­vide an an­swer. It is in­tend­ed to help the stu­dent how to ap­proach a ques­tion, fol­low­ing the steps in a process and be­come more con­fi­dent in ap­ply­ing what has been learned.”

How­ev­er, Dowlath stressed that the AI tech­nol­o­gy was not be­ing in­tro­duced to re­place teach­ers.

“Let me be very clear, the avatar is not a re­place­ment for the teacher. It can­not re­place pro­fes­sion­al judge­ment, knowl­edge of the child, en­cour­age­ment, dis­ci­pline, cre­ativ­i­ty or hu­man con­nec­tion. The avatar may as­sist with an ex­pla­na­tion, but the teacher un­der­stands the child,” he said.

The min­istry said 66 prac­tis­ing sec­ondary school teach­ers were in­volved in re­view­ing and val­i­dat­ing the ma­te­r­i­al across the six sub­ject ar­eas, in­clud­ing six lead teach­ers and 60 sub­ject spe­cial­ists and team mem­bers.

Dowlath said the con­tent was not sim­ply gen­er­at­ed by AI and passed di­rect­ly to stu­dents.

He al­so warned that AI could pro­duce in­ac­cu­rate, in­com­plete or bi­ased re­spons­es and could be mis­used by stu­dents to avoid do­ing their own work.

Stu­dents were urged to ver­i­fy in­for­ma­tion against ap­proved ma­te­r­i­al, con­sult their teach­ers when un­cer­tain and pro­tect their per­son­al in­for­ma­tion.

“Use the avatar to ask bet­ter ques­tions, not to avoid think­ing… Use it to strength­en your work, not to present work that is not your own. Use it as a learn­ing sup­port, not as a short­cut,” Dowlath said.

Teach­ers in the six sub­ject ar­eas will al­so re­ceive lap­tops, while train­ing has al­ready been con­duct­ed across ed­u­ca­tion­al dis­tricts, in­clud­ing To­ba­go.

The min­istry said it plans to re­lease the learn­ing ma­te­r­i­al term by term and mon­i­tor the avatar’s re­li­a­bil­i­ty, class­room use, stu­dent en­gage­ment and tech­ni­cal is­sues.