The terms "Artificial Intelligence" (AI) or "Künstliche Intelligenz" in German currently dominate the discourse. Artificial Intelligence refers to the ability of a machine or computer to mimic human competencies such as logical thinking, learning, planning, and creativity.
This raises questions and concerns about how AI functions, its ethical aspects, copyright issues, and whether AI will replace human abilities and creativity. The impact of AI on education and particularly on e-learning is immense. As an e-learning agency, we grapple with questions related to topics such as copyright and the lack of regulation at national or international levels. However, we recognize the enormous potential of AI technology. It offers us opportunities to accelerate processes, automate tasks, enhance quality, and strengthen our innovation capabilities.
The future development of AI and the extent to which it can replace human activities cannot be determined at this time. In our work as an e-learning agency, we currently view AI as a tool for ideation, creating content prototypes, conducting in-depth research, and maximizing our creative potential. On one hand, we understand our target audience(s) best, knowing their learning needs and the high standards we must uphold to achieve our goals. On the other hand, our experience shows that many AI-generated contents still require careful review and adjustment.
Let's explore together four areas where AI is employed in creating e-learning content:
Bringing More Creativity and Variety to Content:
Natural Language Processing (NLP), a branch of AI, has made significant progress in content creation. AI-powered NLP algorithms can understand, interpret, and generate human-like text. Instructional designers can use this technology to develop interactive dialogues and engaging stories for e-learning courses. This advancement enables us to create dynamic and interactive scenarios that stimulate critical thinking and problem-solving skills, enriching the learning experience.
Accelerating Processes:
This advancement is accompanied by automation and speeding up the content creation process. AI algorithms can generate written content, graphic suggestions, quizzes, audios, and videos based on defined target audiences and learning objectives. This automation significantly speeds up the content creation process, although it still requires human experts to review and revise the results.
Translation and Localization:
AI-powered translation tools allow the rapid processing of large amounts of text. This is ideal for time-sensitive projects, as the quality improves steadily through AI and extensive data learning. Costs are dramatically reduced, providing an excellent opportunity to localize content even within budget constraints. NLP technology is also used in translation - think of everyday translation programs like Google Translate and DeepL.
Quality Assurance and Error Detection:
AI algorithms can serve as an additional layer of quality assurance in content creation. They are trained to detect errors in digital learning materials, such as spelling and grammar mistakes, as well as inconsistencies. AI tools can scan the content and mark potential errors, which is a valuable first step in the proofreading and editing process. Automating this error detection saves time and ensures that learning materials are error-free before being made available to learners.
Conclusion
In a world dominated by technology and innovation, AI opens new doors as a powerful tool in digital learning. We follow developments in this area with interest – whether regarding technical advancements or legal and ethical aspects – and focus on finding ways in which AI can meaningfully support us and our clients in the creation and delivery of e-learning.
