Latest news with #tutors
The Guardian
29-05-2025
- General
- The Guardian
UK first year students: share your experiences of university teaching
We would like to hear from first and second year undergraduate students about their experiences of university teaching following the Easter break. How much contact time with tutors do you have and how many lectures are you offered each week this term? Has teaching time met your expectations? You can tell us your experiences of university teaching using this form. Please include as much detail as possible. Please note, the maximum file size is 5.7 MB. Your contact details are helpful so we can contact you for more information. They will only be seen by the Guardian. Your contact details are helpful so we can contact you for more information. They will only be seen by the Guardian. If you include other people's names please ask them first.
Daily Mail
22-05-2025
- Science
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Chatbots will be able to teach children TWICE as fast as teachers in the next 10 years, says the 'godfather of AI'
Chatbots will be able to teach children more than twice as fast as teachers can within the next decade, the so-called godfather of AI has predicted. Geoffrey Hinton, who won a Nobel Prize for his work on the technology, also claimed AI personal tutors would 'be much more efficient and less boring'. Speaking at Gitex Europe, the British computer scientist said: 'It's not there yet, but it's coming, and so we'll get much better education at many levels.' AI personal tutors are already being trialled in UK schools, with the technology now able to talk directly to the student and adapt lesson plans to their knowledge level. The government has already funnelled millions of pounds into AI education initiatives – though it has claimed the technology will 'absolutely not' replace teachers. Teachers struggling with a heavy workloads and packed classrooms have already begun turning to AI to help with lesson planning, marking homework, and giving feedback. Despite spending decades pioneering the powerful technology behind chatbots, Dr Hinton has in recent years been speaking out about the dangers they pose to humanity. At the event in Berlin on Wednesday, he claimed they would likely achieve 'super intelligence' - in other words, become cleverer than humans – within two decades. Geoffrey Hinton, who won a Nobel Prize for his work on the technology, claimed AI personal tutors would 'be much more efficient and less boring' Scientists and tech firms were creating 'alien beings' and we still 'don't know how to keep them safe,' he warned. However, he said the two main benefits would be seen in healthcare – in both diagnosing diseases and creating cures - and education He said: 'AI will be much better at tutoring people. We already know that if you take a child and give them a personal tutor, they learn about twice as fast as in a classroom, and that's because a personal tutor understands what it is the child doesn't understand, and tailors their explanations to what the child's understanding. 'AI should be able to do that even better, because AIs will have had experience with millions of children to train. This will come in the next 10 years or so.' One AI personal tutor – created by Meta, Facebook's parent company – has been tested in UK secondary schools to teach maths and English since November last year. The chatbot called 'Manda' – costing £10 a month per student - was trained on 550,000 minutes of transcribed explanations from over 300 fully qualified teachers. The AI tutor teaches lessons based on key stage 3 and 4 of the national curriculum for children aged between 11 and 16. Dr Hinton gives a speech during the technology fair GITEX Europe 2025 this week It adapts its lessons to each pupil's individual knowledge and skill level and allows students to interrupt whenever they need to ask a question. In August last year, a London private school became the first to give a 'teacherless' GCSE class, with students using a mix of AI and virtual reality headsets to learn. David Game College said the platform works out what the child excels in and what they need help with, and then provides a bespoke lesson plan. Strong topics are moved to the end of term so they can be revised, for example, while weak topics are tackled more immediately. John Dalton, co-principal at the school, told Sky News: 'There are many excellent teachers out there but we're all fallible. I think it's very difficult to achieve [AI's] level of precision and accuracy, and also that continuous evaluation.'
