Education Minister: AI SEA tutor to support, not replace teachers

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­[email protected]

While it is in­tend­ed to be a learn­ing tool aimed at en­hanc­ing the learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence for Pri­ma­ry School stu­dents, Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Michael Dowlath says the in­tro­duc­tion of an AI-pow­ered math­e­mat­ics tu­tor is not ex­pect­ed to re­place tra­di­tion­al teach­ers.

Dr Dowlath made the re­marks on Fri­day dur­ing his fea­ture ad­dress at the launch of the plat­form, which is geared to­wards pro­vid­ing so­lu­tions and step-by-step ex­pla­na­tions of past pa­pers for the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am­i­na­tion, which is now less than 75 days away.

The por­tal, which is ac­ces­si­ble by cre­at­ing a user­name and ac­count, fea­tures a dig­i­tal tu­tor whose ap­pear­ance can be cus­tomised.

The tu­tor pro­vides a break­down of prob­lems and can track the progress of a user in their prob­lem-solv­ing and rea­son­ing skills.

Dowlath not­ed that while the tool is a valu­able com­po­nent of a stu­dent’s prepa­ra­tion kit, it was in­tend­ed to com­ple­ment work cov­ered in class­rooms, as he stressed that it would not re­place in-per­son teach­ing ses­sions.

“This ini­tia­tive does not re­place the teacher in the class­room; it strength­ens the teacher’s work, it com­ple­ments the class­room in­struc­tion in a way that will sup­port re­me­di­al work and re­in­force­ment.

“Long ago, we called it drill and prac­tice. When the teacher taught you, you would go home, do your home­work with your par­ents and re­in­force by vis­it­ing the dif­fi­cult top­ics.

“So this soft­ware ac­tu­al­ly equips our teach­ers and ed­u­ca­tors with an ad­di­tion­al re­source to meet the di­verse learn­ing needs of our stu­dents.”

Dowlath says the plat­form was part of his min­istry’s re­newed push to in­te­grate the lat­est tech­nol­o­gy in­to learn­ing strate­gies to reach stu­dents us­ing the most ef­fec­tive means.

Re­fer­ring to pre-tests con­duct­ed by the min­istry on Thurs­day night, Dowlath said an es­ti­mat­ed 2,000 users logged on­to the por­tal at that time.

He al­so hoped that stu­dents would use the dig­i­tal plat­form not on­ly in their SEA prepa­ra­tions but al­so in sharp­en­ing their over­all math­e­mat­ics skills.