Student Voices: Technology as a Future Learning Partner
A Q&A with Eli Blouin and Mark Frydenberg
Eli Blouin, currently a data analytics and marketing major at Bentley University, and Mark Frydenberg, Distinguished Lecturer of Computer Information Systems at Bentley ponder the day-by-day maturation of technologies that help us work and learn. Mark is the director of Bentley's CIS Sandbox, a technology social learning space, where Eli works as a student tutor. Increasingly, advanced technologies play a role that especially impacts student learning. Here, Mark and Eli explore the notion of "technology learning partners" in a Q&A conversation.
CIS Sandbox Tutor Eli Blouin at Bentley University imagines a future technology learning partner that supports curiosity, critical thinking, feedback, and personalized learning. (Image by AI, Microsoft Copilot)
Mary Grush: How can a technology be a "learning partner"?
Mark Frydenberg: Think back to when we started using technology as a tool. Students began to use calculators, search engines, PowerPoint, learning management systems… These and other technology platforms gave you information: spreadsheets, presentations, course outlines, lots of search results…
But the "learning partners" you're asking about are different from those original tools because they are technologies that participate with you in the learning process.
Technologies that ask you questions, give you feedback, or suggest what to do next are taking the first steps toward becoming true learning partners. They might challenge your assumptions or cause you to adapt in some way. They take a big step beyond the role of information provider.
Technologies that ask you questions, give you feedback, or suggest what to do next are taking the first steps toward becoming true learning partners.
Finally, tools that you can contribute to and use to create new knowledge collaboratively can also be considered "learning partners".
Grush: What about the role of AI? We see AI trying to become our learning partner or agent in other ways, but we're starting to understand that it doesn't have to hail from AI when you're thinking about what a learning partner actually looks like.
Eli Blouin: As a student at Bentley, I've come across this type of partnership — the feedback, the back-and-forth, that two-way street of a learning partner. Even Google Docs or any online collaborative editing tool lets you create knowledge with a learning partner. Technology can become a learning partner in lots of different ways. Despite AI being something that a vast majority of students have been exposed to, it is not the only model of a learning partner.
Despite AI being something that a vast majority of students have been exposed to, it is not the only model of a learning partner.
Ask yourself: Are today's AI systems very different from earlier technologies? Are they just another step in the long evolution from learning resources to learning partners?
Grush: From your perspective as a student, Eli, what qualities would make a particular technology a good learning partner? Do you have an example you'd like to point to?
Blouin: A good learning partner relationship works like a two-way street; something that kicks you off by giving you certain knowledge, which you are able to test, prove, or follow up with an example. It's primarily that back-and-forth nature that I think a good learning partner possesses. It's dynamic and always changing.
An example that comes to mind is Data Camp. It's a useful tool that some professors use for practice material. You can test yourself and the program learns what you learn. It understands the gaps in your knowledge and gives you practice questions based on what you do or don't know.
Frydenberg: Would a learning partner help you think or think for you, Eli?
Blouin: It certainly would help you think, rather than think for you! But it would make you more curious, too. A learning partner will tease out that curiosity from you, and you might even find yourself asking questions that you hadn't had before. That's where the best learning partnerships show themselves, I think: When the student becomes curious about what's next.
Grush: Mark, how do you encourage students to use technology to enhance or amplify their learning by finding technology learning partnerships and using them effectively?
Frydenberg: I'll begin with an example of how students in my Python class this past spring used AI in ways that didn't just give them answers, but encouraged them to think, using AI as a tutor. We came up with a generic prompt that students could use to ask AI to give examples and then ask the students questions that get increasingly difficult — still not giving them the answers, but guiding them to find answers instead. This has shown us that AI isn't just an answering machine. It can be a full partner in learning.
AI isn't just an answering machine. It can be a full partner in learning.
Another way that AI technology can be a learning partner in our classes is by supporting critical thinking — and playing 'devil's advocate'. Rather than simply verifying a student's response, AI can offer counter-arguments or alternative perspectives that challenge student assumptions and guide them to evaluate their own claims.
Students rely on learning partners to help them understand new concepts and reflect on what they learned. We were talking in the CIS Sandbox recently about how our tutors are outgrowing that title — really, they are acting as a technology learning coach, giving feedback and encouragement throughout the learning process. As technologies advance, technology-enabled learning partners may take on a similar role.
Grush: I think you've both presented a useful framework for thinking about the kind of support you want from a technology learning partner. Does your thinking stem from the formal learning sciences as well as from your own student experiences, Eli?
Blouin: Certainly. I think our connection with and knowledge of human learning today (informed and inspired by the learning sciences) helps us understand what a technology learning partner will look like in the future. Once the technologies become even more personalized and able to give you that almost-human feedback, and those tools actually engage in human-like dialogue to do that, we'll see much more of what technology learning partnerships have to offer.
Once the technologies become even more personalized and able to give you that almost-human feedback, we'll see much more of what technology learning partnerships have to offer.
Grush: What do you think may be among the most meaningful changes in, say, the next five years?
Blouin: When I think of what will improve in the next five years — and I truly believe it's where we're ultimately heading — I think it will be the technology learning partner's ability to gain a full picture of the learner. The technology will be able to take absurd amounts of context — and data — and understand the learner as a whole: where their gaps are, what they need to learn, how they learn, and how to create content tailored to a particular student. In an instant it would be able to assess, to test knowledge, and know the student as a whole person. That would be an ideal learning partner.
The technology will be able to take absurd amounts of context — and data — and understand the learner as a whole.
Frydenberg: One of the areas where AI falls short now is the fact that it's hard for AI to know what you as a student don't know. It doesn't necessarily know what you don't understand. I see this all the time. So this is a prime area for change.
Grush: Can student voices contribute to the best evolution of technology learning partnerships?
Blouin: Yes! Everybody's a learner, but I think students are in a unique position to inform, due to where and how they are learning.
Frydenberg: Definitely, yes. We can draw on student voices to inform and grow human/machine learning partnerships. Ideally, students should be the co-creators of that knowledge, whether the process is with other people or with machines.