Virtual Reality and Intelligent Tutoring System

 

 

Virtual Reality and Intelligent Tutoring System:
A Possible Solution to Educate the Masses



I will be very honest to say that I do not have any exposure to a VR application, but I intend to use AR apps with Intelligent Tutoring Systems in my future endeavors. To know a little more about my ambitions, you may want to read the blog in full. 

In order to answer the question, let me give a little background on my answer. The Right to Education is legally guaranteed for all without any discrimination by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). Unfortunately, many nations have failed to comply with their obligations. Even though there is an excellent aspiration for learning and education, unfortunately, these nations' general population is not aware that their respective governments are responsible for taking measures and facilitating education for all.     The root problem of all the problems is the unawareness of the problem. Before we can even solve a problem, we need to know exactly what the problem is. "It's so much easier to suggest solutions when you don't know too much about the problem" (Forbes, n.d.) And the famous physicist Albert Einstein quoted, "Given one hour to save the world, I would spend 55 minutes defining the problem and 5 minutes finding the solution." (Einstein, n.d.). Education in quite a few developing nations is suffering at the hands of corrupt and undereducated governmental officials, unqualified bureaucrats, and profit-seeking greedy businessmen.

On the other hand, illiteracy and poverty go hand in hand together; many studies have proven a great correlation between poverty and education. Students from poverty-stricken households are very likely to end-up in failures in their lives. In the same context, researchers have demonstrated that higher mental development of children is linked to the family's financial status (Hillestad, 2014). Due to ill education, children are socially and emotionally backward. The effects of adverse and unstable environments manifest in children's behavior and their lives. They develop low self-esteem, behave differently, sometimes aggressive, and disconnect from society. Educating close to a billion people is an overwhelming task (Fiske & Ladd, 2011). Educational organizations like UNESCO, UNICEF, The World Bank, United States Agency for International Development, etc., have reached only a little of the enormous population there, and millions are still deprived.

What is the best way to reach those unprivileged? How could we educate the masses not in a shorter period and not in centuries? The answer lies in the delivery of education with the use of technology. With all of its might, the World would have to rise and help the developing nations and work diligently to eradicate illiteracy from Africa.

Since I have traveled extensively in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asian countries, I found that educating the masses is almost impossible. It has been documented that most of the social welfare agencies provide education and healthcare support close to major roads and highways, which means the remote population is still deprived of quality education. . we would have to imply AI technology in teaching the masses. I have written some papers and presented a possible solution of using an Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS). Applying Virtual Reality (VR) combined with ITSs, is a promising approach to computer-based learning and training. However, the classical structure of ITSs has not been conceived to deal with the new sources of information and interaction provided by VR environments. The resulting designs combining both technologies often renounce the traditional modular separation of ITSs to increase efficiency but make it very difficult to reuse their components.

The use of Virtual Reality (VR) and Virtual Environment (VE) technology combined with Intelligent Tutoring Systems would be a valuable and promising approach to computer-based teaching.  Together with the traditional properties of ITSs instruction (personalization of the contents and presentation, an adaptation of the tutoring strategy to the student needs), VR allows the student to gain practice and skills interacting with virtual scenarios similar to the real ones, especially laboratories would not be available. Thus, it is desirable to develop VR-based ITSs is a complex task that would involve a lot of research and efforts in VR and ITS integration.  

The two technologies have already moved into an advanced stage, but integrating the two would be an effort. My research would be based on marrying the two technologies into one. Education may reach those nations who have been deprived of it for centuries. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and Carnegie Mellon University are already working on ITS. Still, no significant research is being done on the integration. I intend to do post-doc research in that field. Hopefully, I would be able to make a difference in the lives of many.

References:

Hillestad, S. (2014, August 1). The link between poverty and education. The Borgen Project.

Ladd, H., & Fiske, E. (2011, December 11). The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/12/opinion/the-unaddressed-link-between-poverty-and-education.html

Khan, A. A. (2019). The digital tutor: A concept, a passion, a reality. An intelligent solution to the world’s illiteracy menace. 


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