What is AI?

(16) What is Artificial Intelligence? In 5 minutes. - YouTube

What is AI powered adaptive learning? 

Adaptive intelligent learning is as an educational method and a technology to tailor learning that fits the individual needs of each student. AI-powered adaptive learning technology such as Duolingo is a form of differentiated learning with AI to curate language learning. 

Duolingo: The mobile commercial language App

If you are a teacher or a student, it's very likely that you've used Duolingo. The combination of machine learning and adaptive learning in Duolingo illustrates well the benefits of AI-powered adaptive learning in Language Learning. This system incorporates gamification principles to encourage users to practice regularly to earn rewards and to space out practice sessions by setting daily and weekly goals. In this way, users are exposed daily to advertising. Duolingo is said to offers also personalized, engaging, and user-friendly learning experience by combining adaptive learning and gaming elements. In this self-paced mobile application, the learning process takes users through a sequence of tasks mostly based on translation. Duolingo records your misunderstandings, knowledge of topics, phrases, and words, as well as the number of times you've encountered the vocabulary. From AI you can predict how likely you are to recall a given word. Subsequently, learning goals are said to be adapted to your learning goals. Added to this, Duolingo saves data from your interaction with the software. 

Duolingo & Pedagogy 

 

As many Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MAAL) Duolingo’s pedagogy, relies essentially on grammar-translation and audiolingual-type activities. (Reinders & Pegrum, 2015). But it is not this practice that has brought over 300 million users to Duolingo. The free-to-use language learning product continues to attract users, investors, and since its launch in 2011 because of aspects such as the gamified elements. Gameplay mechanics used in non-gaming settings are commonly defined as gamification (Deterding et al., 2011). (Kapp, 2013) uses game mechanics, aesthetics, and game thinking to motivate action, promote learning, and solve problems. Gamification pedagogy in Duolingo consists of challenges, rewards, competition, and ranking elements based on individual or teams’ learning goals. In this way, Duolingo uses gamification as a pedagogy to optimise: 1/ performance and 2/ data collection integrated into the technology.  

 

Instructional Design

Thinking in terms of an Adaptive learning environment from the perspective of Instructional design means understanding how the learning environment articulates and where the focus lies. There are many models to choose (click here) from but research show four important models (Vandewaetere et al. 2011; Vagale and Niedrite 2018; Chrysafiadi and Virvou 2015). 

(1). The Media Model focus is on the relationship between the learner and content  

(2). The Domain Model which constitutes the knowledge to be learned

(3). The Adaptation Model whose goal is to adapt the learning material and the learning path to the learner’s needs

(4). The Learner Model (also called Student Model) is an abstract representation of the learner’s cognitive and non-cognitive characteristics, maintained by an adaptive system (Shute and Zapata-Rivera 2007;  Somyürek 2009).

Added to these models, Instructional Design must include design principles specific to Adaptive Learning environments. Here, there are a number of principles, for more info (click here).