E-learning Africa goes AI

Like in 2018 and 2022, the e-learning Africa conference was held in Kigali this year. Good for us. Participating is expensive, but, like in 2022, we managed to negotiate the fees in exchange for marketing the conference in Rwanda and chairing some sessions. 

With 1225 participants from 82 countries and 235 speakers, e-learning Africa is by far the biggest event on e-learning on the continent. It was an excellent opportunity for our recently hired people to see what is happening in the world of e-learning. And that is a lot. Next to evergreens like Moodle and British Council, who proudly presented their STELIR courses which we digitized, a lot of newcomers showcased their products, often based on the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

AI was everywhere! I chaired a session of three speakers on the use of AI in teaching and learning.

• The first one just talked about the use of ChatGPT by teachers and by students during assessment. Students use AI to write exams and teachers use AI to discover that!
• The second speaker promoted ReadSpeaker, which is an AI-steered speech-to-text and vice-versa application, which you can add to any program or software. So, no excuse for your e-learning not being inclusive for the visually or hearing impaired!
• The last speaker even presented a complete AI steered individualized learning program for children, called Mindspark.

I felt awed and humbled by the power of the technologies now being developed in teaching and learning. At the same time, my own experiences with using AI in developing courses, make me suspicious – despite the many options and possibilities, it still feels like being put by an algorithm in a nice, but impersonal mould.  It just lacks personal touch and uniqueness. 

So, I was relieved that in the final session of the conference, after one and a half hours of fierce debate, a vast majority of the 800 people in the room voted against the statement that ‘Within five years traditional ways of teaching will be obsolete’.   Most people stressed the importance of face-to-face contact between teacher and their students and between students in a classroom, stressing the many unspoken meanings that students learn from live contact with other humans.  Others, on the other hand, argued that, shortly, AI will be able to show students a 3D animation of the best teachers in the world explaining on demand, anywhere, any problem the students want to have explained to them. So, who will then need a living teacher anymore?

Both arguments made me think about the future of hand-made e-learning, as we produce it today.  I think the process of contracting, interviewing target groups to find out what they need making videos and training trainers will always need living beings interacting to make it work. On the other hand, the process of designing look and feel, content creation and making images will be done increasingly with the use of AI, also by us.  Actually, that is already happening! 

Be assured however that this blog was 100% written by a living human, being me!

Jan Willem Eggink