Educators and AI Tutors: Complementary or competing roles?

The use of AI tutors in online education raises questions about the future role of educators—such as instructors, facilitators, and tutors. AI tutors emulate human tutors, and soon, distinguishing between an AI and a human tutor may become challenging. This prospect presents exciting potential but also raises questions about the overlapping functions these two may have. Are the roles of AI tutors and educators mutually exclusive, or can they be complementary? 

As with other generative AI applications, the AI tutor holds the promise of increasing educators’ productivity. Many believe this will translate into more time for “meaningful interactions” between learners and educators [1].

In 2023 alone, a handful of AI tutors emerged in the online educational landscape, beginning with Khanamigo and Coursera Coach, followed by CheggMate and Synthesis Tutor [2–6]. They all respond to a diverse pool of learners and varying learning scopes. Yet all share the same pedagogical principles and roles, which have been typically associated with educators [4–6]. These tools are designed to mimic interpersonal interactions with a human tutor and can do so on a larger scale and at a faster pace [3]. They might even support learners more effectively than the best human tutors [4–7].

Redefining Roles

One of the primary roles of tutors in online learning is to facilitate interpersonal interactions, which include group and one-on-one interactions with learners. The social and most humanistic aspects of tutoring are within reach of the conversational AI tutor. It will not be long before AI tutors are capable of assuming the role of tutors and facilitators in online courses. They will not only help with administrative tasks and lesson planning but also undertake responsibilities that were once deemed exclusive to human tutors. The roles traditionally associated with educators in online learning environments are modeling effective teaching and managing communications by supporting active learning, metacognition, motivation, and adapting content to learners’ goals and needs, among others [2, 7, 8].

AI tutors may soon be able to take on many roles traditionally associated with educators, especially in online education. When this scenario becomes a reality, what will meaningful interactions between educators and learners look like? Failing to redefine the roles of human educators in contrast to AI tutors may result in a future where AI tutors spend meaningful time with learners while human tutors focus on fine-tuning the models that drive these tutors. If that is the case—and it likely will be—the AI tutor may serve as a proxy for meaningful interactions between educators and learners, while the direct interactions that educators have may become more focused on content and educational technology tools.

Call for Reflection

The deployment of highly capable conversational AI tutors is triggering a fundamental change in education—a change that calls for reflection on the role of educators in the online learning landscape. Is it possible to believe in the promise of generative AI in education while also working to keep human interactions at the center of it? This brings me to another question: In the context of an online course with specific learning goals and objectives, where the scope of what will be discussed and evaluated is well defined, does an interaction between a learner and a tutor need to involve direct human interaction to be meaningful? 

References

About the Author

Natalia Echeverry is an instructional designer at the University Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of Pittsburgh. She holds an M.S. in human-computer interaction from the Rochester Institute of Technology. She focuses on designing engaging and effective online learning experiences for adult learners. Echeverry is currently exploring user-centered interface design for AI-based systems, with a focus on online learning environments.