“With AI, we can now tackle educational challenges that seemed unsolvable just a few years ago.”

Artificial intelligence has long since found its way into our everyday lives - and is now also making its way into the classroom. Whether personalized learning aids, smart lesson planning or automated correction: AI-supported tools offer enormous opportunities to make everyday school life easier and more individual for teachers and students. But how can these technologies be integrated into everyday education in a meaningful and responsible way?

This is exactly what Duy Anh Pham, Product Lead AI Product Innovation at educational media provider Cornelsen, is working on. Together with his team, he is developing practical solutions that provide teachers with concrete support in the classroom - while at the same time meeting the highest educational and data protection standards. In an interview with #ai_berlin, he talks about the role of generative AI in education, the development of the Cornelsen AI toolbox, the balancing act between innovation and responsibility and what the classroom of the future could look like.

Thank you very much for taking the time for this interview. How is artificial intelligence changing learning and teaching in schools? What opportunities and challenges do you see?

Since the launch of ChatGPT at the end of 2022 at the latest, it has been clear to us that the topic of artificial intelligence will also have a major impact on and change the education sector. With cornelsen.ai, we are making generative AI compatible with education by specifically compensating for the typical weaknesses of language models - such as incorrect statements or inaccuracies. We achieve this by integrating curriculum-compliant, didactically prepared content and quality-assured publishing materials curated by our experts.

We see AI as a dynamic development process in which we are constantly working to improve. In close collaboration with teachers, we rely on an agile development model that constantly incorporates feedback and refines our solutions step by step. This results in reliable tools that are suitable for everyday use and directly support teachers in their pedagogical work - while at the same time maintaining our high educational standards.

Can you tell us more about Cornelsen's AI toolbox? What functions does it offer teachers and learners?

In our AI toolbox cornelsen.ai, we currently offer five different tools that cover the entire spectrum of teachers' everyday work. Cornelsen-GPT is the digital assistant for teachers and provides support with administrative tasks such as preparing events, acts as a source of ideas, gives pedagogically sound advice with the help of stored specialist literature or helps with time-consuming communication with parents. The KI lesson planner (KI-Unterrichtsplaner) provides suggestions for lesson sequences and adapts these flexibly to the federal state, type of school, class level, subject, topic and the required competence objectives as well as a specified time period. The AI material designer (KI-Material-Designer) creates suitable and differentiated teaching and learning material for different teaching phases - for example, discussion prompts with a connection to the real world, reading texts or tasks with curriculum adaptation and reference to textbooks (Beta). And our AI correction assistant (KI-Korrektur-Assistent), in collaboration with DUDEN, provides support when correcting texts and homework for pupils. Thanks to handwriting recognition, texts can be easily uploaded as photos or scans and then anonymized and evaluated. Our AI learning assistants (KI-Lernhelfer) are also a brand new addition. These are AI chats that teachers can create on any topic and which then support pupils in their learning. In the future, our traditional textbooks and AI will move ever closer together so that AI can be seamlessly integrated into lessons.

How do teachers and schools react to AI-supported educational tools? And what ethical guidelines do you follow when using AI?

The feedback we have received shows that teachers are open (but also critical) of AI tools and see many opportunities for their everyday work at school. However, they are also chronically overloaded due to the many demands at school. Our services are deliberately designed to be low-threshold and provide targeted relief and support for teachers in their everyday work. Dealing with language models is not just a technological change, but also a cultural one: work processes are changing, which is why user-centered product development is essential for us. In addition, there is a wide range of training courses that provide concrete suggestions for use in teaching practice. We see great potential to relieve the burden on teachers by adapting the AI tools for lesson planning and material creation, which perfectly complement our printed and digital offerings. These adaptations are currently being successively integrated as a beta test offer in order to make them available directly in our textbooks, such as the lesson manager for teachers.

What measures does Cornelsen take to ensure the privacy and security of student data in AI applications?

This is a very important issue for our digital education solutions, and we always take it into account in all development steps. The collection and storage of personal data is carried out in accordance with current data protection regulations. We work closely with school authorities, operate the AI toolbox on servers in the EU and always offer anonymized access to AI language models. For the aforementioned AI learning aids for our pupils, we rely on an open source language model hosted in Germany, which meets the highest data protection requirements, because a note saying “Please do not enter any personal data” is not enough here.

Let's talk about scalability: are you aiming to roll out learning with AI solutions internationally? And at the same time, how important is it that we find our own solutions at regional, national or European level to prioritize our own values and relevant content?

Cornelsen is traditionally a company with a focus on the DACH region, where our expertise is anchored. In this area, we have been known for decades for the best possible educational media and therefore also focus on this region when it comes to AI. In the education sector in particular, quality must never be compromised by the technology used. There is no “one size fits all” here. Instead of competing with tech companies in the field of technology, we use AI strategically to continuously deepen and expand our didactic expertise - our real differentiating feature.

What developments in the field of AI and education do you expect in the next five years? How will the classroom of the future change?

AI has arrived in education - not as a passing trend, but as a fundamental transformation. At Cornelsen, we are consistently investing in this future because we are convinced that only those companies that take bold and responsible steps now will survive. For many of our customers, AI, especially the use of language models, is still a black box full of uncertainties. But as with any technological revolution, language models will fundamentally change the way we work - from lesson design to personalized learning support. This cultural change takes time and trust. That's why we develop user-centered solutions that gently accompany teachers on this journey. The fascinating thing: With AI, we can now tackle educational challenges that seemed unsolvable just a few years ago: You can literally tell the language models what you want to achieve. They not only adapt learning content, but can also tailor the tone, depth of explanation and communication style to each individual learner - similar to an empathetic tutor who knows exactly how best to reach each learner. At the same time, we are seeing a trend towards industry-specific AI models. General models will increasingly give way to specialized, subject-specific optimized systems - a development that we in the education industry are actively shaping by combining AI with our didactic expertise, pedagogical experience and quality-assured publishing content. This freedom will transform classrooms into creative, collaborative spaces in which individual learning and human relationships have even more room than they do today.