Artificial Intelligence Can Transform Our Schools
How next-generation technology can build better learning environments
Ashley Arhart, Design Principal with the Boston Consulting Group, Smart Environments Practice.
As part of the Reimagine America’s Schools interview series, President and CEO of the National Design Alliance Ron Bogle met with Ashley Arhart to discuss the role of Artificial Intelligence in creating learning spaces, and how emerging technologies can be integrated with curriculum and design to create the schools of the future.
Ron Bogle: What you do every day, for most of us, still is science fiction. You have reinvented retail space. You have reinvented the office space, blending artificial intelligence and the physical environment to enhance and transform our experiences. So, what have you learned about this world that is very exciting for you?
Ashley Arhart: There are two primary vectors that I find really fascinating. One is the fundamental design challenge and the nature of a multidisciplinary physical design exercise that brings together different practitioners that frankly, aren't used to talking to each other very often. The combined focus of these various skill sets — actually changing the nature of the built experience, changing the nature of architecture, making ceilings that can see and walls that can feel, and floors that can hear — that’s very exciting. Which brings me to the second vector, the opportunity to not just occupy these physical spaces, but actually collaborate with the space so they take an active part in facilitating the activities that take place in them.
RB: How will these evolving technologies impact education?
AA: When it comes to education, everything I just said is a cause for concern. I think it's the Marvel phrase, "With great power comes great responsibility." With emergent tech comes remarkable responsibility. My friends and former colleagues at Microsoft are doing some of the most thoughtful work in this space. Brad Smith, President of Microsoft, wrote a book called Tools and Weapons. And I think the title is very indicative of the fact that these technologies should not be deployed without absolute thoughtfulness of how they might be misused.
This is especially so in an educational environment where equity is such an important consideration, we have reason to be concerned about actually moving into more surveillance as opposed to a support model for the leveraging of many of these technologies. I think you're going to see a lot of the ethical conversations first encountered in the workplace.
And the post-COVID environment is so interesting right now. We're hearing a lot about contact tracing. We're hearing a lot about social distancing requirements inside a physical workspace, which has to do with understanding who is where and for how long, and how close. So, we're about to get some real-world practical exposure to both the inherent difficulties and the obligation to manage not just the data itself from a privacy and security perspective, but also, who does what with that information. So making sure that the privacy of individuals, whose data is being collected, especially biometric data, is being thoughtfully protected. There is very little legislation around the management of these things. And it's critical that the legislation and the ethical thinking is on equal footing with the sophistication of the technology itself.
RB: Given your ethical concerns, how do we protect children in this technologically-sophisticated environment?
AA: It's a great question. This has been mostly an adult conversation. In fact, very, very rigorously, legally mandated that it only be an adult conversation. So, I think we're seeing new areas of the law that frankly need to quickly evolve. In order to mitigate that, I would suggest a very slow and deliberate, highly generalized approach where no individual is singled out.
In the near-term, and potentially even the medium-term, this would require that some technologies don't become part of the educational environment. Computer vision technologies, where identity potentially becomes part and parcel of the data collected, is something that should have no place in an educational environment until much better legislation is in place to protect children.
RB: We have seen many advances in education using technology and many experts believe that the pandemic will accelerate the use of technology. Going forward, we really ought to be integrating curriculum, technology and learning environment to achieve greater outcomes. What do you think?
AA: I might suggest that the learning environment would benefit from a human-centric product design perspective. Where again, you're not thinking about it from just an architectural or even a curriculum perspective, but you're actually thinking about it very holistically from a user-centered perspective.
Then, you're being professionally agnostic around what decisions — whether they'd be physical, digital, human or interpersonal — get brought to bear on any particular situation. You then choose from the rich canvas of different opportunities to craft something in a way that isn't necessarily beholden to the old adages. This will require different people around a different style of table and a new vocabulary for many of these groups, recognizing the need for the student to be at the center of the equation.
RB: How does evolving technology help us bridge the equity gap?
AA: This idea of collaborating with environments, there are ways for that physical space to monitor in a variety of different ways and in emergent ways I think; being able to understand gaze tracking, gesture association, to begin to understand when somebody is either physically or emotionally present in a conversation, or checked out. Again, I'll reference the ethically challenged part of it.
Wearable technology can actually understand galvanic skin response and level of emotional engagement or distraction. All that information in the hands of a caring and thoughtful educator, I'd like to imagine, could only increase the efficacy of a classroom situation. So, I like the idea of really deepening that act of physical collaboration, that everyone has equal access to understanding in the moment.
RB: The coming year will be challenging for education leaders as they grapple with opening schools. Reimagine America’s Schools is focused on working with cities and schools beyond the crisis and when we begin to think about the long term implications for schools and school design. With over 100,000 existing school buildings to redesign and many new buildings planned for the future, how would you take on such a large challenge?
AA: That is a big question to try to reimagine a very complicated ecosystem, and focuses on a particular problem space. Taking on too much of this at one point in time would be tantamount to trying to boil the ocean. So, really, zeroing in on perhaps one or two of the most profound pain points. And then, beginning to pilot a handful of approaches that might begin to run a spectrum from quick wins to much more elaborate and longer time horizon pieces. Some of the work we have done in retail areas has taken four to five years of development time.
RB: As we think about change in education, is there a short-term and long-term horizon?
AA: I think it would be important for a group of diverse thinkers to begin to think short-term and long-term, because we're not going to be able to flip the switch on a lot of this stuff overnight. We need a certain amount of commitment and a certain amount of trial and error before we strike on what the most meaningful technology interventions would work in a school environment. I don't think focusing on something four to five years out at all compromises the ability to create some really interesting quick wins and things that could be leveraged more universally within a school year.
One thing that is top of mind right now just given the COVID situation is the health and well-being of students. So, ensuring that children who may or may not be ill, or educators who may or may not be ill, are given the information they need to make sure they are kept safe. For example, I would be very interested to understand health and well-being, physical activity, the ability to ensure that meals are being appropriately eaten.
I would focus perhaps a little bit more on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Are our children healthy? Are they nourished? Do they feel physically safe in their building? I think that's where I would probably invest the majority of attention, presuming then that we could build on that foundation in a bunch of really interesting ways.
RB: Ashley, put your future hat on: I'm a student in the Reimagined America's School that truly uses technology to enhance my education. What does that look like to me when I walk in at 8:30 in the morning?
AA: Ideally, the school building would have some awareness of what went on in my home relative to my health and well-being. It might understand if I'm well-rested as a student, might have a sense of my state of mind, and might be able to ensure that anything my parents wanted me to achieve was surfaced to anyone I might come in contact with.
For example, if mom and dad thought that my math homework was a little hard last night, it would be fantastic if that information could be communicated effortlessly to my math teacher so that they understood who was struggling and might get some visibility.
Imagine the building or wearable technology that is in constant communication with the building, helping me be thoughtful about when I need to take a break; maybe if I've been staring at something too long and had to look away, just to take a bit of a breather. I think the physical environment can help make sure that my ability to focus and concentrate is optimized by my environment, which can be communicated to my teacher.
RB: So, Ashley, when so many neighborhoods don't even have Wi-Fi, some might read this and say, "That's just a fantasy. That's never going to happen in public education.” How do you respond to those types of doubts when it comes to redefining the educational experience?
AA: I think we have plenty of examples when exactly that argument could have surfaced. We have seen how the penetration of the highway system, the penetration of electricity, certainly took a certain amount of time for us to get ubiquity in these systems. But just because it's going to take time and effort, it doesn't mean that we shouldn't start and we shouldn't begin to figure out how to make it approachable. There are also remarkable initiatives going around in Big Tech. For example, with Google’s moonshot practices, a big area of focus for them has been trying to figure out ways to create ubiquity of Wi-Fi connectivity. There are many people working on this very actively.
I think our challenge is to figure out how to ensure that when it's time and it is available, that it's done in the most appropriate way in the service of the people that are benefiting from it. There's a lot of work to do, and it's coming probably faster. I mean, the audience may or may not be familiar with Moore's Law that talks about the doubling of computer power every 18 months. And how it's actually breaking because we're surpassing that in a world where we're talking about quantum computing. Getting Wi-Fi everywhere is much closer I think than it was even 24 months ago.
RB: There are many emerging trends in education now - personalized learning, project-based learning, STEM, STEAM, Maker learning. Could these new initiatives align with these new emerging technologies in the learning environment?
AA: I was just going to say, what you've sparked for me is the absolute necessity, frankly, to make technologies like this available to students so that they can have access to these careers of the very near future. I would suggest that as fast as everything is moving, the more profoundly urgent the access to these technologies has become.
Simply throwing up your hands and saying "we can't" is putting those children at a remarkable disadvantage in terms of their career paths, in my estimation. A few years ago lots of people thought Elon Musk was a little crazy. Yet he has made things that seemed very recently futuristic, quite tangible. And I think that's a good reminder of just how truly close at hand much of this stuff is.
RB: The Elon Musk’s of the world disrupt whole industries, but when we think about disruption is that really possible in reforming education? Can we create pipelines for young people to enter into fields of technology and engineering while also invigorating our learning environments with the opportunities that technology provides?
AA: How fascinating and what a remarkable opportunity to actively engage the students in the creation of their own environments in many ways, rather than this being foisted upon them. If we gave them the tools to actively collaborate and create these new environments on their own behalf, first of all, I think they'll just be better. Second it would allow these future leaders to be both digital natives and also digital inventive. Given these sorts of resources, I think it could be the best opportunity for all of us.
RB: That’s a wonderful vision of change, but change is hard. Do you think we’re up to it?
AA: I have such profound faith in the spirit of the American people. Part of me is not really concerned about that. I think you see the spirit of inventiveness, it's just fundamental and that is why we are quite comfortably the center of innovation on the planet. Some very interesting things are happening in other areas of the world where I think some of that advancement is coming at the expense of its people. So, I am excited about the possibilities in this country.
I do think it is incumbent upon us to make sure that access to this thinking and participation in this conversation is more open. I think it's gotten very, very exclusive. And that is what concerns me more. This just can’t be a tech bubble discussion. We need a broader discussion about how to ensure that this benefits everyone in this country equally. We need a conversation that is very open. If that happens, I am not remotely concerned. In fact, I think this country is probably best equipped to invent exactly what the world would most benefit from, which is an egalitarian application of advancement for human striving, universally.