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AI integration into education of Bangladesh

Galib Nakib Rahman | January 24, 2025 00:00:00


IT skill is critical to adopt AI in education — collected photo

"How can Artificial Intelligence be incorporated in a country where the users may lack the second part of the word in the very first place?" says an educator in Bangladesh. Sounds snobbish, doesn't it? Let the context be provided.

Despite being a country with over 10 lakh freelancers earning more than a billion annually, one of our failures as a nation is not being able to harness the true power of the internet. Proof? Still, we have adult videos and words of that sort as one of the topmost searched keywords for years, and yes, even after a tumultuous year when a regime changed and "Bangladesh 2.0" was achieved, the phrase mentioned above was one of the most coveted ones. This happens after terms like Digital Bangladesh and Smart Bangladesh were coined and worshipped. But before we choose to bash our country as a piñata, a clarification must be provided: yes, our neighbouring countries also share the same negative trend, if not more, but owing to their sheer volume, the positive aspects are also way more voluminous than ours.

Singapore has Codaveri which detects errors in students' coding, South Korea is on the verge of customising digital textbooks based on individual prowess, India is incorporating AI modules into existing pedagogy courses, and China adopted its AI development plan in July 2017.

Bangladesh has its MOE (Ministry of Education), UGC (University Grants Commission) and their watchdogs in the form of Academic Councils. Bangladesh has its students, and the best thought-out usage of AI is doing "copypasta" using Chatgpt, overusing words like 'tapestry', or trying to cheat in exams using Chatgpt without even reading the content. Bangladesh has its educators relying on Slides AI or being oblivious of the correct usage of AI and writing social media posts with it.

Now that every single stakeholder is angry at me, I have your undivided attention. Yes, Bangladesh is nothing like the aforementioned countries. Be it social, political, economic, or technological infrastructure, it is all different. We have our National AI Policy, which sprinkles Jargon like "Digital," "Smart," and "Vision 20xx" with a frosting of "robust," "sustainability," and "progress." The know-how? NADA.

Every time anything goes wrong with the capital market, BSEC, DSE, and CSE are always the magic trio to take the fall, even if some other factor is causing it. The question is not about whether it is right or wrong; rather, the query is regarding the reason. Why? These three are the regulators or part of the regulatory framework. Similarly, MOE and UGC will be the aim of the pitchfork here. The "Outcome-based education" of 2023 was approved without any further progress. Irrespective of any regime, the independence of UGC is never in question. Still, the age-old tradition of tying red tape to everything hinders progress. Even if a new curriculum is tried to be forged, it cannot be provided to any student who is from a previous catalogue. It is said this promotes fairness, is it? Or is it depriving the scope of incorporation?

While the mere concept of online classes in our country was a far-fetched dream, the pandemic turned it into a reality, albeit with a few hiccups like not paying attention to the classes and heavily relying on the recorded classes which can be brandished in the ethical and psychological aspect. But with the advent of AI, the 'chill guy' vibe got even further enhanced since the students are now plagued with plagiarism. It makes things easier on the surface, yes, with a propensity towards laziness, but is it making them smarter? Taking the ethical dilemma aside, the time saved by copying and pasting it from ChatGPT, is it used constructively or being vested in yet another reel? Even if we treat it as a Machiavellian society with zero regard for ethics, the question still remains because the core foundation of education lies in learning. What learning is being done by the students by mindlessly copying the contents?

Now, the nation builders are the dear educators who are supposed to be mentors and guides and be someone devoid of biases. I am not talking about the privileged top 2 per cent, but an educator who is not exposed to the mere concept of AI itself; how can they promote a good culture when they are rewarding the student copying content from AI with better grades than someone who is putting in the honest work? As much as we can blame the format and culture for getting feedback from students, the basic job of an educator is to teach, but what can they teach when they do not know themselves? Yes, the authority can be blamed for lack of training and the whole shebang like every time, but what about the sheer lack of effort to upgrade oneself and blindly relying on the notes they prepared back in their student-like ages ago?

The world has Harvey AI providing legal support to lawyers and getting hyped up without replacing the lawyers. Similarly, AI will not be able to remove these three prongs of regulators, students, and teachers from the education equation, but the pattern will be changed. Referring back to the 'snobbish' comment, even in 2025, we see no bridging the gap of technological knowledge when it comes to using the internet. We don't expect to have a brand new curriculum with every student learning to use the LLM/NLP tools or coding. Still, a basic idea about prompt engineering encouraging multidisciplinary AI learning, or the paid software to hold off plagiarism, integration of industry partnerships, and skill development, along with making the policymakers/regulators more tech-savvy, would help in preventing shoving a one-size-fits-format down everyone's throat and promote a collaborative scenario to break the circle.

But more importantly, like any other sector, all the stakeholders involved here must change their mindset and be willing to do their basic job-learn.

The writer is an engineer-turned-finance-expert-ESG-enthusiast.

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