Automation is the technology by which a process or procedure is performed with minimum human assistance. The World Bank‘s World Development Report 2019 shows evidence that the new industries and jobs in the technological sector outweigh the economic effects of workers being displaced by automation.
In 2019, Forester predict that automation “will become the tip of the digital transformation spear, impacting everything from infrastructure to customers to business models.”
The analyst house, Gartner says that more than 40 percent of enterprises will create state-of-the-art digital workers by 2019, which will eliminate 20 percent of all service desk interactions by combining AI with technologies such as robotic process automation (RPA), cognitive systems and Chabot technologies.
This tells us that in 2020, automation will provide the key for businesses to increase the speed of their digital transformation journey, and that very soon we will begin to engage with machines with more regularity, in a more sophisticated fashion and also be increasingly reliant on the real-time, unassisted decisions they make.
If you take a look at the automotive industry, you will see just how close we are to being dependent on automation in our everyday lives.
Many of us already interact with automation on a daily basis to simplify everyday activities without even realizing it. We receive automated order confirmations after placing orders online or use “smart” devices to regulate our thermostat. The average consumer is swiftly experiencing a semi-automated lifestyle in all aspects of their day-to-day lives as these kinds of automation and more are penetrating workplaces and homes at a rather rapid pace. In spite of all this, the impact that automation has on education systems is hardly considered — however, automation’s role in education is most definitely a topic for discussion.
Ipsita Panda, Jhasketa Hota, and Karan Singh, the Indian researchers and authors of a study on the automation of library systems in schools in 2016 argue that, in the current world economy, many “education institutions have [already] automated most of their teaching learning process….[Automation can and should] be used in education to improve administration efficiency and to enhance teaching and learning.” They also suggest that the education field is already experiencing, and will continue to feel, the impacts of emerging automation platforms.
Some important questions to ask:
To answer these questions, we’ll examine some prospective concerns as well as advantages that come with the implementation of automation technologies, like RPA, within the educational field.
The educational field is a broad one which includes teachers, students, and academic administrators. Technologies, as they become more widely adopted, become incorporated into both primary and secondary education systems. This was how it was with electronic calculators, desktop computers, laptops, tablets, projectors, “smart” boards, and much more that Skool Media https://skoolmedia.org/ and other Edu-Tech innovative companies inculcate into education. The same can be looked forward to of automation and robots. The genesis of this adoption is beginning to be visible in schools as they make use of automated attendance and grading systems and use robots to be add to teaching.
With these examples in mind, let’s consider the ways in which automation technologies, such as robotics, RPA, and AI, can provide challenges as well as benefits to teachers, students, and academic administrators.