Watershed Moments

Expert Discusses Wave of Edtech’s Impact

Michael Trucano, on sabbatical leave from the World Bank, is a visiting fellow in the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution, where he explores issues related to effective and ethical uses of new technologies in education. Current areas of inquiry include the use of generative artificial intelligence in education and, more broadly, emerging edtech policies, initiatives, and institutions after the pandemic.

In his 26 years at the World Bank, a financial institution within the UN system, he has provided policy advice, research, and technical assistance to governments seeking to utilize new technologies in their education systems. In this role, he has been adviser to, evaluator of, and/or working-level participant in large-scale educational technology initiatives in over 70 countries, including China, India, South Korea, Uruguay, the United States, and in many countries across Africa, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe.

What are some of the most promising edtech trends emerging now?

In many regards, the pandemic was a watershed moment for the use of educational technologies. Education went online, quickly—at least for those students, households, teachers and education systems that were online. The critical importance of connectivity, not only inside schools but wherever teachers and students may be, was laid bare. The same for the availability and accessibility of devices. Many general purpose IT applications (Zoom is one obvious example) found widespread use within some education systems, and evolved to meet the user needs that quickly became apparent, and whose importance was not only ‘nice to have’, but mission-critical. 

While there has been some retrenchment in the sector, with the pandemic edtech bubble bursting to some extent, lots of applications, ways of operating, and expectations have remained ‘sticky’. As things slowly returned to normal—if that is even the right word to use to characterize education, post-pandemic—and education systems tried to digest and learn from uses of educational technologies during the pandemic, so that new related policies and guidelines could be introduced and formalized, a new disruption emerged, both exciting and scary: generative AI.

“While there has been some retrenchment in the sector, with the pandemic edtech bubble bursting to some extent, lots of applications, ways of operating, and expectations have remained ‘sticky.’”

-Michael Trucano

How do you see generative AI playing a role in educational contexts? Are there particular applications you find promising or particularly concerning?

Currently, the most common applications of generative AI in education contexts seem to be: (1) summarizing materials; (2) brainstorming / idea generation; (3) replacing searches; (4) rephrasing existing content to make it more intelligible  (‘explain it to me at the level of a sixth grader, or a graduate student’); (5) rewriting content to remove grammatical errors, make it flow more smoothly, or, in the case of content written by non-native speakers, help it sound more; (6) as a coding partner; (7) as a writing partner. Increasingly this functionality is being built into applications and tools students and teachers are already using, in addition to purpose-built and general purpose AI tools. Such applications can be promising or concerning, depending on how they are used. A particularly concerning use of such tools that is starting to emerge is related to the use of deepfakes to change the appearance of students and impersonation. 

With rapid adoption of new technologies, what are some of the ethical concerns that need more attention, and how should schools address these?

The rapid adoption of educational technologies raises a host of potential ethical challenges. What data should be collected, on whom, for what purpose(s), how long should it be saved, who can access it, who can share it, who owns it, who benefits (and who might be harmed), who decides answers to such questions—and how is all of this monitored and evaluated? These are all questions that apply to life outside school, of course, and some of these raise potential legal challenges, in addition to ethical (and in some cases, moral) issues. But given that use in school settings is usually mandated (or, viewed from another perspective, coerced), and that most users are under the age of legal consent, these sorts of concerns are particularly acute, and important. A first, basic step, that educational institutions can and should use to address such concerns is to acknowledge them, and to develop related guidelines and policies—and to regularly review/revise such guidelines and policies, both as technologies change (and the tech always changes!) and as more experience in the use of specific tools is gained.

How do you assess the readiness of different educational systems to integrate and benefit from educational technologies?

At a system level, there are a number of tools available that can help in assessing the readiness of an educational system, as well as an individual school or classroom, to integrate educational technologies. Globally, tools such as the World Bank’s EdTech Readiness Index and the Asian Development Bank’s Digital Education Readiness Framework are helpful. Within the U.S., CoSN has a number of toolkits, checklists and surveys that are in pretty widespread use and useful! As education systems explore how best to take advantage of emerging advances in educational technology, I’d also recommend they have a look at some of the great resources that TeachAI has produced.