5 AI Strategies and Tools to Personalize K-12 Learning

Personalized learning seeks to tailor the educational experience to each student's unique strengths, needs, interests, and aspirations. The goal is to enhance student outcomes, boost engagement, and instill lifelong learning habits. However, creating a personalized learning environment can present challenges for educators, such as crafting differentiated instruction, gauging student progress, offering timely feedback, and managing diverse classrooms.

Fortunately, AI-driven tools and systems can offer solutions to these challenges, aiding educators in designing effective personalized learning environments. Below I offer five AI strategies and useful tools that can assist teachers and schools in creating these environments:

1. Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS)

Intelligent Tutoring Systems offer a promising avenue for personalizing student learning. They emulate one-on-one tutoring by offering guidance, hints, explanations, and feedback. By utilizing machine learning, ITS analyze learner-generated data to provide tailored feedback and support. This can create a dynamic learning environment that recognizes individual student characteristics, preferences, and progress. As a result, students receive relevant and meaningful learning activities that can boost their engagement and motivation.

One example of an Intelligent Learning System is Khanmigo, an experimental AI guide developed by Khan Academy. Khanmigo is designed to provide students with one-on-one tutoring by leveraging AI techniques, such as natural language understanding, speech recognition, and computer vision. Khanmigo can interact with students through voice or text, understand their questions and needs, provide them with relevant content and exercises, and give them feedback and encouragement. This New York Times article examines how Khanmigo is being utlilized in select school districts.

ChatGPT can also function as an academic tutor, offering a personalized learning trajectory that helps ensure student engagement and understanding. From foundational skills for younger students to advanced topics for older ones, ChatGPT has wide applications. To learn more, read the post I wrote about ChatGPT for Personalized Learning for EdTechTeacher.

• See also my review of AI Tools for Personalized Learning

2. Adaptive Learning Systems

Adaptive learning systems help personalize learning by adjusting educational content in real-time based on a student's performance, ensuring that the material presented is at an appropriate level of difficulty. This personalization helps ensure that students remain engaged, challenged, and supported in their learning process, leading to better retention and understanding of the material. Adaptive learning systems can improve the outcomes, efficiency, and satisfaction of students by providing them with relevant, challenging, and feedback-rich learning activities.

DreamBox, an adaptive math platform for K-8 students, exemplifies this approach. It adjusts content to meet individual learning requirements, allowing students to progress at their own pace. Also, Lalio is a self-paced adaptive learning tool designed to improve phonics, word recognition, and comprehension in K-2 classrooms.

3. AI for Roleplaying

Roleplaying is an immersive method for students to delve into various scenarios, honing their decision-making and problem-solving skills. With AI integration, these scenarios can evolve based on student decisions, offering a distinct learning experience. AI can support roleplaying by generating realistic and engaging stories, dialogues, and feedback that adapt to the students’ choices and actions.

ChatGPT, in this context, can be employed in diverse role-playing scenarios, from embodying historical figures to simulating real-world problem-solving situations. For example, ChatGPT be a specific character in a historical or role-playing scenario, a scientist who is conducting an experiment, or someone attempting to solve a real-world math problem. To learn more, read the post I wrote about ChatGPT for Roleplaying for EdTechTeacher.

Also, Classcraft allows teachers to create interactive and engaging lessons by transforming their classroom into a role-playing game. Classcraft leverages advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and data analytics to track student engagement, better motivate students, and create personalized learning quests.

4. AI for Educational Games

Educational games are fun and interactive ways of learning that can motivate students, enhance their retention, and reinforce their knowledge. When augmented with AI, educational games can adapt to a student's proficiency level, ensuring challenges are appropriately scaled. Educational games can also provide immediate feedback, personalized challenges, and adaptive learning paths. AI can support educational games by creating dynamic and immersive game worlds, generating adaptive content and feedback, and analyzing student performance and behavior.

Duolingo, a popular language learning app, employs gamification effectively and its AI system, Birdbrain, personalizes lessons by assessing both the difficulty of exercises and the proficiency of users. For its part, Kahoot! is a fun and competitive game-based learning system that uses generative AI to create a variety of question types that teachers and students can integrate into their games.

5. AI for Quizzes and Flashcards

Quizzes and flashcards are potent learning tools that bolster knowledge recall and application. They can also improve students’ metacognition, confidence, and test-taking skills. AI can enhance these tools by generating intelligent questions, offering feedback, and optimizing review

For instance, Quizlet has several new AI-powered features. It can transform student notes into comprehensive study tools, gauge material familiarity, and even provide step-by-step solutions to varied problems found in student textbooks. Also, Quizgecko is an AI-driven tools that swiftly transforms any text into quiz questions, flashcards, and notes.

• See also my review of AI Tools for Quizzes and Flashcards

AI can be invaluable in helping personalize the learning experience by providing each student with a customized learning path that adapts to their pace, level, and style of learning. When leveraged effectively, AI tools and systems can improve the outcomes, efficiency, and motivation of students by providing them with relevant, challenging, and feedback-rich learning environments.