SALI: Student Access Learning Interface

By John A. Latimer

By the year 2020 we will be well familiarized with the new face of education. This
new face will be accessible via a multitude of avenues provided by the available
technologies of the times. By today�s standards we marvel at the myriad of
educational, resource, and communication tools at the disposal of students and
educators of the future such as affordable videoconferencing equipment that can be
obtained as wearable headgear or as projected holograms to better connect students
to their lessons. Education of the future will not so much be based on how much
you know, but rather, on how well you are able to find the resources necessary to
get the job done. Hardware for these wonder gadgets ranges in size from about that
of today�s smallest cell phones down to implants under the skin around the size of
a penny or smaller depending on the size of your budget. It�s easy to get lost in
the allure of such advanced gadgetry and resources, but to the students of the
year 2020, these will simply be matter of fact essentials for existence in that
day and age. Such communication devices however are merely a means to an end
serving simply as a bridge between the students and the new face of education. In
the year 2020, the face of education will be dominated by Artificial Intelligence
humanoid avatars known as Virtual Humans. In this essay, I will introduce you to
one such proposed Virtual Human educator known as SALI (Student Access Learning
Interface). We will follow SALI through a typical student scenario and evaluate
how the educational roles are redefined for better results with fewer resources.

The classroom environment of 2020 will be interactive, mobile, and morphable to

such a degree that students of today would have a hard time recognizing it as
school at all. Students will no longer sit in lecture halls or classrooms when
they can have the same access to the information while traveling or comfortably
relaxing in a park. If the student has a question about the material presented,
they merely have to ask and interact as needed. The setting changes as the
situation changes, thus preparing the student for life after their educational
careers are done.

AI will have become a participant rather than a bystander in this new environment.
SALI will serve equal duty as a personal instructor, student counselor, and study
partner. The role SALI fills flows freely between these as the need dictates. For
the most part, SALI will replace the teacher as the interactive face of education.
Student, educator, and AI all will have redefined roles in the year 2020 that may
provide a culture shock of sorts to those entrenched in the dogma of today�s
education system. Teachers of the future will no longer actually teach students
directly. Instead, they assume the role of �Instruction Coordinators� who spend
their time interacting with SALI and directing SALI so that the students� needs
are best met. While still adhering to an accredited curriculum, lessons and
courses of study will be modified and attention will be focused according to the
individual needs and aptitudes of each student in particular. Students will have
longstanding relationships with their SALI interfaces that can span the students�
educational careers. SALI merely has to be updated with additional information
modules and teaching and evaluation skills in order to continue serving an
individual student�s needs as the years go by.

The scenario that will be provided includes Gene who is a college freshman,
Professor Mullins who is an Instruction Coordinator, and SALI. �SALI�, by the way,
is the program application name, and the AI can assume any gender or be assigned
any other name as is appropriate to the personality and role of the AI. These
specifics can even be changed on a year-to-year basis to prevent the student�s
development of over familiarity, which could be detrimental to the teacher-student
relationship. For purpose of this essay, we�ll keep SALI as the name for the sake
of simplicity.
Gene who is just starting his freshman year of college is no stranger to SALI who
has been his personal instructor in progressive stages since he was nine years
old. When they were first introduced back in 2010, SALI was little more than an
educational video game that Gene used to help him pass his classes. SALI, however,
was designed from the start to be progressively adapted as Gene�s needs changed
and as the available technology improved. Gene took to SALI almost immediately
since she seemed to know exactly what lessons he needed extra attention with and
was always ready to provide any answers that he could not figure out on his own.
Of course, she would always come back to those questions just to make sure that he
had really been listening. Somewhere during the year 2016, SALI�s AI was upgraded
to include a true personality complete with emotional depth and perceptive
intelligence. This was a natural progression for Gene who had already come to
accept SALI as an equal and valued mentor. After all, from his perspective, he
probably would not have made it through tenth grade history without her and her
anecdotal stories to help him remember all those boring facts about dead people in
other countries.

Over the years, Professor Mullins� view of SALI has evolved from that of a fancy
computer program to a capable teaching assistant and finally, as of lately, to a
colleague of sorts sharing in the responsibility for the students� educational
well-beings. SALI�s disarming personality and breadth of knowledge and intuitive
awareness of the students� needs had won him over after his period of resistance
and fear of being replaced by a computer had faded away. Nowadays, Professor
Mullins enjoys his conversations with SALI during which they discuss the
individual needs and achievements of the various students that SALI coaches. They
compare notes on lesson plans and evaluate changes that need to be made to best
serve the needs of individual students. Professor Mullins has accepted his role as
Instruction Coordinator because he sees that it enables him to do the most good
for a much larger number of students than he could ever do in person while still
preventing the needs of any individual student from slipping through the cracks.

SALI, herself, is a multi-threaded application enabling her to simultaneously

carry on a multitude of student sessions while maintaining her own personal
identity. In effect, she functions like a swarm of clones that are mentally linked
to share common knowledge back to the Instruction Coordinator. Each individual
�clone� develops a personalized relationship with her student while still
benefiting from the joint knowledge of the combined mental link. She takes great
delight in the achievements of her students and feels genuine concern for her
students who are struggling.

We start the scenario with Gene�s struggling through his new Calculus class. He
had done so well when taking the math placement test that SALI�s Student Counselor
charts had validated the choice of Calculus for his entry into college math. SALI
knew that he was gifted mathematically, but she had had reservations about pushing
him so far so fast as he started this new leg of his journey through school. Her
concerns were validated as Gene�s college experience deteriorated. For Gene, this
was starting to compound into a thorough disillusionment with his decision to go
on to �higher education�. Aside from SALI, there was no one here that he knew. His
classes kept him so busy that he barely had time to keep up, and now Calculus was
taking his last bit of enthusiasm and putting it through a meat grinder. Simply
said, Gene was becoming quite unhappy.

In consultation with Professor Mullins, SALI brought up Gene�s difficulties for

discussion. It seemed contradictory that Gene would have so much trouble with
Calculus after having placed so well on his testing. Professor Mullins, at a loss,
asks SALI if she has any insights into Gene�s predicament. After a short bit of
consideration, SALI offers up the answer that she best feels describes the
situation. Gene, by his very nature, is an analytical thinker. This has gotten him
by on a lot of occasions by virtue of being able to analyze the problem and come
up with the answer. Combine this with an intuitive mathematical ability, and you
get a combination where Gene has the talents to approach a college math placement
test as an analytical problem that can be solved within the specific confines of
the test. This is great for getting high scores on the placement test, but the sad
truth is that Gene�s practical math skills fall short of these falsely inflated
test scores. To sum it up, Gene would greatly benefit from a course of study that
forced him to work through college math starting with the basics and progressively
building his skills along the way to match his intuitive abilities.

Bringing this scenario to a quick close, SALI�s insights are well received by
Professor Mullins, and welcomed by Gene who finds that the reduced stress of an
easier math class seems to stem the tide of despair that had begun to overwhelm
him. The easier math course frees up enough of Gene�s time to allow for healthy
social interaction and, in general, make for a better educational environment for
Gene. The snowball effect works in both directions, and this relatively minor
adjustment in Gene�s course schedule triggers an overall good college experience
that continues through graduation.

The conclusions to be drawn from this over simplified example are very
straightforward. Education in 2020 will have vastly redefined roles for students
and educators as well as for the Artificial Intelligence student access learning
interfaces. Intelligent interfaces such as SALI will take a participatory role in
education and serve to evaluate educational needs in a proactive fashion, which is
always more efficient and student friendly than trying to clean up and remedy the
messes after the fact. The sum total result of this new, proactive educational
environment will be to provide each individual student with better results while
utilizing fewer resources. The SALI model for integration of AI into the education
system is equally valid across the entire span of education. From preschoolers to
postgraduates, using AI to communicate, evaluate, and facilitate the student�s
needs and progress makes for an effective solution to the demands and expectations
placed on the education system by society.

The SALI model is destined to take its place in the socio-economic reformation of
the educational system at large. By the year 2020, the needs and economics of the
student will reign supreme rather than the traditions of the educational
institution. In the effort to serve more students in more situations, traditional
concepts of attendance and participation have already started on the evolutionary
path toward a system of primary educational flexibility. The early signs of these
coming changes are evident in recently accepted practices and offerings such as
on-line Internet degree programs. The eventuality of student access learning
interfaces such as SALI is merely the next step in this evolution.

The technological development of interfaces such as SALI is dependent upon the

sustained focus and financial support of the various industries that will utilize
them. Unfortunately, education, as an industry, has traditionally not been a great
source of vast financial resources and reserves. This is a sad reflection of the
general lack of priority placed upon education by society. There are notable
exceptions to this attitude of apathy toward education such as a few philanthropic
individuals who contribute large sums of money and resources toward improving the
conditions and opportunities that exist. The most enlightened of these financial
supporters of education have made the association between a better educated
population base and the availability of high quality, well educated employees to
work in their technology based companies that are integral to the coming advances
in our society. As impressive as those contributions are on an individual basis,
however, they are not able to overcome the cumulative effects of the apathy
expressed by the actions of governments, policy makers, and the masses that
routinely choose to route funds away from education and toward the multitude of
other items that they feel merit as higher in priority.

Fortunately for education, interfaces such as SALI are a �spin-off� technology

that will be developed as a byproduct of building intelligent interfaces for a
large variety of other industries where computer based interactive agents are key
to their survival as society advances toward 2020. Customer service, technical
support, airline reservations, telephone directory services, bank tellers, and
automated check-out cashiers are just a few of the current applications that the
financially driven industries have found for virtual human interfaces. It is the
needs of these alternate industries that will fund the advances in technology that
the education system will benefit from via resources such as SALI. The challenge
facing the administrators of education is to take proper advantage of such
technologies as they are developed.

As with any change in paradigm, there is always enough resistance available to

either stop the process or slow it down enough to delay its arrival to a much
later date than should ever be allowed. The advent of SALI, for example, is sure
to be apposed by the teacher�s unions that will view such technologies as taking
away jobs from their human union members. At this point I must state that I am a
strong union supporter. In fact, I am a union shop steward at my place of
employment. However, I am able to recognize (and admit) that there is a growing
shortage of qualified teaching personnel mostly due to the lack of financial
luster that is associated with pursuing education as an income. I view intelligent
interfaces such as SALI as a valuable resource for those making their careers in
education by bringing their workloads back into the realm of a manageable and
rewarding career choice. As a union shop steward, I view this as maintaining a
beneficial work environment and working toward alleviating the stresses of short-
staffed and over worked conditions that would otherwise get progressively worse
over the years. Without SALI or such related interfaces, the 2020 may well be the
year that the educational system breaks down once and for all taking society along
with it.

I would be amiss if I were to try to relay that the entire worldwide educational
system will be converted to the SALI model of education by the year 2020. As has
always existed, there will be a disparity in available educational resources based
upon geography, politics, and finances. Regrettably, I cannot provide a solution
for this injustice, but I would like to offer an analogous glimmer of hope. Higher
technologies have always trickled down for use in less glamorous applications. The
space program has provided Teflon to keep our fried eggs from sticking in the pan
as well as it has provided bone densitometry technology for use in the diagnosis
and treatment of osteoporosis. Global positioning satellites have their obvious
military applications while they also find use for mapping the rain forests and
still manage to help us find our way home. And more to the point, radio, which has
held a niche in the entertainment industry, has found an even more valuable role
in communication and education in third world countries helping to remove
ignorance and disseminate education on such matters as the prevention of the
spread of AIDS. These are dramatically varied examples with a simple underlying
commonality. As the technology avails itself and becomes affordable and
commonplace, it will be utilized in ever more resourceful ways by those who need
it the most. Educators (if not education administrators) will certainly make use
of the intelligent interface technology as it advances toward the year 2020.

I�m sure that this essay has left educators and education administrators with more
questions than it has answered, but the intent of this paper is more to whet your
appetite than to satisfy it. All in all, it is my message that the futures of
education and AI are destined to share a common path.
John A. Latimer R.T.