Tech trends that will impact education and learning in 2020

by Startacus Admin

Tech trends that will impact education and learning in 2020, by Attila AlGharawi, co-founder and CEO of English language learning platform Xeropan.

Technology has managed to find its way into the education sphere slowly and steadily. I believe technology trends in 2020 will greatly impact how we educate and learn different skills and languages. 

Some of the trends identified include:

AI Products \ AI redefines educational services

Artificial technology or AI is not a new term in the IT world, but now there are further verticals of AI that is shaping the industries globally, such as education. According to this PwC report, AI Products by 2030 will contribute over $15.7 trillion to the global economy. 

In 2020 the role of teachers will gradually change. Thanks to AI, repetitive tasks such as correcting tests, analysing scores, synthesizing learners weaknesses and strengths will be handled by algorithms. I believe teachers will soon become like mentors through the assistance of technology to oversee learner progress and offer guidance whenever they feel stuck.

Conversational AI

Now we are over the "robots will kill us all" hysteria, we can focus on the real value of building and delivering conversational AI through smart chatbots, or more teachbots in the educational sector. 

In the educational sector, most importantly in language education, most of the learners in the world cannot afford to pay for the tuition fees of native language teachers, nor can they actually travel and live in the target country. Still they’d really like to go beyond filling in tests, answering quizzes or pronouncing individual words and expressions when learning a language. They’d like to practice their conversational skills as well. 

I am confident that in 2020 we’ll see more and more human-like conversational AI implemented into electronic and mobile language learning solutions to augment teacher to student conversation. Certain conversational scenarios will be handed over to AI where learners can negotiate and get corrected whenever they make a mistake. Human teachers (if learners have one) can then have access to the conversation and offer guidance and suggestions as to how it could have been done better.

Speech recognition

When voice assistants started to emerge in 2011 through the introduction of Siri, no one could have predicted that this novelty would become a driver for tech innovation in several tech industries. Voice-controlled systems are increasingly used in smart cars, smart speakers, and other applications and it slowly found its way into the education sector as well.

The global speech and voice recognition market, which was valued at 6,892.9 million US$ in 2018, is projected to rise at a CAGR of 19.8% and reach a value of 28,335.3 million US$ by the end of 2026, according to Fortune Business Insights.

When it comes to mobile language education, learners might face difficulty pronouncing words, expressions and sentences. Such problems may not help software solutions recognize command over voice, and this may cause a drawback for learners and thus to the educational market revenue. What we’ll see in 2020 is massive technological improvement in terms of voice accuracy and impaired speech to tackle this issue.  

Text to speech engines

You might remember Google releasing Duplex and it was really amazing to watch an AI handle making appointments over the phone.

In 2020 I predict we’ll see massive improvement in terms of text to speech (TTS) engines and a synthesis of TTS engines to control intonation depending on the circumstance, to offer best natural sound as possible so learners can hone their language skills.

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• #edtech
• #education
• #tech trends
• #learning
• #speech recognition
• #ai
• #2020

Published on: 20th December 2019