Virtual lecturers to be overseen by academics at AI university

A new higher education provider offering master’s programmes taught by artificial intelligence hopes to give students more flexibility and allow academics to focus on offering personalised learning, according to a senior leader at the institution.

The London School of Innovation (LSI), a postgraduate institution offering courses in machine learning, digital innovation, entrepreneurship and business transformation, was formally granted degree-awarding powers by the Office for Students in March and plans to welcome its first students in June.

While there are concerns from some quarters about the growing use of AI in higher education, the new institution is shedding the traditional model of academics standing at the front of lecture theatres and addressing students.

Instead, Paresh Kathrani, LSI’s director of education, told Times Higher Education that students will be assigned AI “private tutors” to lead them through “a personalised, hands-on learning experience”.

He said the institution was “elated” to have been granted degree-awarding powers, which has “validated” its “innovative” approach to learning.

Content will be delivered through an online learning system that the university built from scratch. Students can choose to have content delivered in a written format or presented to them by an AI avatar.

At the end of each module, students will engage in a “Socratic dialogue” with their AI tutor about the content to answer questions and reflect on their learning.

It is unclear what demand will look like among students for AI-led learning. Kathrani said the institution is aimed at postgraduate students who “want to break away from the conventional lectures, and want to have more flexibility and independence in their studying”.

While the model may be AI-led, Kathrani said, humans are “always in the loop” and students can request a one-to-one session with their module leader – a real person – at any time.

Kathrani said he believed that outsourcing the bulk of the module delivery to AI would allow more time for more one-to-one learning, adding that “live lecturers” and blended learning will be rolled out in the institution’s second year of operation.

“We believe that those tools free up the lecturer to focus on what’s more important, and that we can leverage technology to deliver information to students in the way that is engaging for them or personalised for them,” said Kathrani, who was previously a law lecturer at the University of Westminster.

He said lecturers’ roles would move from “standing up in front of [students] and delivering content to essentially supporting them through one-to-one consultations and mentorship”.

Summative assignments will be assessed and given feedback by AI, but academics will be responsible for marking formative assessments.

According to Kathrani, the AI tutor system is “backed up by three layers of support” – module leaders who will oversee course content and are available for students to contact; a student success team that oversees student well-being; and personal tutors.

“Research is a core part of our identity,” he continued, explaining that LSI is currently establishing an “academic innovation cluster” that will research how AI can aid learning. The institution’s model, he insisted, allows academics more time to focus on research.

Many academics across the UK are concerned about job losses caused by the sector’s well-documented financial challenges, and Kathrani believes that AI could help alleviate the workload concerns.

“There’s a lot of talk right now about how AI will replace humans, but I don’t think it’s a question of replacement. It’s a question of partnership and how the two work together,” he said.

Reflecting on the wider response to the use of AI in higher education, Kathrani said he believed that legacy institutions were “apprehensive” but that many were beginning to “shift away” from policies limiting AI use and increasingly trying to embrace the technology.

However, he acknowledged that it is easier for new institutions such as LSI to be innovative with the technology, in comparison with “large institutions where things have to go through a lot more consideration”.

He warned that AI should be “embedded” into core curricula and not just “bolted on”.

“We’re living in a generational shift, where the ways in which future generations of learners are going to engage with information and process information is changing,” he said.

“I think it’s incumbent upon educators to move with the times and recognise the ways in which future generations will learn, and to embrace these new technologies that people are growing up with, so ultimately what we don’t have is a schism between what universities teach and how learners are engaging with the world around them.”

juliette.rowsell@timeshighereducation.com