In South Korea, artificial intelligence is being used to personalise education

South Korea is looking to make greater use of artificial intelligence in education. AI could be used to adapt teaching content according to the level of students, starting with the next school year in March 2025. But this project is still facing opposition. Here are some explanations.

Adapted content to personalise the learning experience

Towards adaptive learning to meet new requirements

In South Korea, the current education model is facing a number of challenges: strong competition for university places, and an increasingly demanding labour market. The Ministry of Education has embarked on a digital transformation strategy to make education more flexible, particularly with tools available online, and better adapted to the different levels of students.

One element of this strategy is to replace traditional educational textbooks with digital media. These are combined with artificial intelligence to personalise learning. Initially, only three subjects will be covered: English, maths and computing. Others should follow, such as history and Korean.
Four school levels are involved: levels 3 and 4 at primary school, level 1 at collège and level 1 at lycée. In France, this is equivalent to CE2, CM1, 5e and seconde.

Limiting school drop-outs, adjusting difficulty: how is AI being used?

Artificial intelligence should be used to adapt the difficulty of teaching according to the performance and shortcomings of each pupil. When a student has sufficient knowledge or learning ability in a subject, AI increases the difficulty level of exercises or explanations. And if learning is more complicated for a student, the AI adjusts the pace to better meet his or her specific needs.
According to the Korean news agency Yonhap, AI should help ‘prevent students from dropping out of school’. The role of teachers is also changing: routine tasks, such as marking exercises, are being devolved to AI, as proposed by TestWe AI. This means that teachers can concentrate more on mentoring and coaching their pupils. Finally, AI gives them continuous, real-time feedback on student performance.
This adaptive learning is accompanied by teacher training, so that AI can be used in the classroom. Cost of the transformation: 740 million dollars over three years (source Worldbank.org), between 2024 and 2026.

South Korea’s National Assembly puts the brakes on the project

However, the arrival of the new digital textbooks on Korean school desks is not yet a foregone conclusion. Last December, the South Korean National Assembly voted in favour of an amendment that leaves the choice to schools. Schools will be able to decide whether or not to use the textbooks from the start of the school year in March 2025. Another aspect of this amendment is that textbooks supplied by the AI ‘fall into the category of complementary teaching aids’. For the Opposition, textbooks should in fact be solely printed or digital works with no AI input. As a result, the strategy for the digital transformation of the education system is also suffering from the current difficult political context in the country.