The Future of Education

We all went through school and had varying experiences in our interactions with teachers and the feedback they provided. In typical public schools and many private schools, a one-size-fits-all model is taken. Whether or not you’ve mastered some core concepts, you are moving on with everyone else to the next grade. However, imagine a world where education becomes hyper-personalized. This is possible with modern data science, AI, and cognitive psychology. My aim with MIDIScale is to make piano learning a part of this personal education revolution.

Like everyone else, students are generating a wealth of information about their internal models of what they are currently learning and how they view the world. There are two major ways that these data can be used: by the teachers and by the students.

Teachers will be able to get snapshots of the strength of their overall class on different topics. For example, a teacher could see that in general their students are not doing well with a specific type of math problem and dedicate more class time to addressing it. Or even more sci-fi, this future dashboard could glean that many students are missing a critical building block to understanding a current problem (e.g. maybe they do not understand addition very well and thus have trouble learning multiplication) and then the teacher could address that core concept students are missing. In cognitive psychology speak, we can use this data to figure out what they understand, what they do not, and why they do not based on our inferred mental representation that they have. This can then be aggregated into a summarized dashboard for the teacher.

Another key advantage of a data-driven approach is that students can learn at their own pace. The problems that a student sees can be adaptive to their current learning needs. With traditional teaching methods, students are often forced to learn at the pace of the class, regardless of whether they are ready or not. This can be frustrating for some students and can lead to disengagement or a lack of interest in learning. With personalized feedback, students can work at their own pace, which can be particularly helpful for those who need more time to grasp a concept or those who want to move ahead.

Moreover, personalized feedback can drive stronger soft-skills in students. As they receive more and more feedback, their ability to determine what their strengths and weaknesses are will develop alongside. Further, they’ll learn to develop strategies of how to address their shortcomings by mirroring how the feedback and adaptive learning aids them in their own learning. On top of this, students can gain a better understanding of the learning methods and strategies that work best for them. This can help them become more self-directed and take ownership of their learning.

In conclusion, personalized feedback using the data generated by students has the potential to transform education and make it more individualized. By providing students with tailored feedback, teachers can help them learn at their own pace, identify their strengths and weaknesses, and become more self-aware. As technology continues to evolve, we can expect to see more personalized learning experiences in the future, which will help to ensure that all students receive the education they deserve. And with tools like MIDIScale, we can already see this hyper-personalized future of education taking shape.