Artificial Intelligence (AI) contributes to achieving Goal 4 of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development: to provide quality, equitable and inclusive education and learning opportunities for all.
The potential synergy between education and Artificial Intelligence is also highlighted in the UNESCO document Artificial Intelligence in Education: Challenges and Opportunities for Sustainable Development.
The role of NLP
Computational Linguistics (LC) is a key area of AI, as it enables computers to understand and generate human language.
Within AI, a central role is played by Natural Language Processing (NLP), which provides access to the information content of texts through the reconstruction of the underlying linguistic structure and its explicit representation.
AI, in particular, makes it possible to personalise and improve learning outcomes.
Advanced applications of NLP methods, techniques, resources and tools make it possible for a computer to answer questions about the text regarding:
- the contents
- the degree of readability
- the genre to which a text can be attributed
- the characteristics of the author of the text (level of schooling, mother tongue, etc.).
The school as an organisation
Artificial Intelligence, through the analysis and processing of the increasing amount of data within school information systems, may contribute to the creation of an integrated knowledge management system applied to the educational field that makes it possible to:
- building improvement and innovation pathways for the continuous training of school staff;
- adopting new organisational and working methods that may represent the school as a Learning Organisation.
The application of Natural Language Processing (NLP) to the school environment promotes the shared management of knowledge and the analysis of the the main phenomena that characterise the school, thus supporting institutional decision-making processes.