🔆 Make it Make Sense: AI for Effective Learning

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🗞️ Issue 45 // ⏱️ Read Time: 9 min

Hello 👋

Let’s play a game. Take a second and see how many slogans from your childhood cereal commercials you can recite off the top of your head. Probably quite a few, right? Maybe you even pictured the cereal box, the shape and taste of the cereal itself, and the mascot. Now, see how many formulas you can remember from your first mathematics class. I’m guessing not as many. Why is that? Well, there are a few different factors that go into long-term information retention, an important aspect of the multifaceted process that is learning. Let’s discuss how AI can enable more effective, personalized learning that outlasts a box of cereal.

How Information Sticks in Your Brain

Research has long shown that as soon as we learn something, we start to forget (that’s why social media platforms are constantly vying for our attention). “The Forgetting Curve” was first introduced by German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus in 1885. His research demonstrated that individuals forget ~50% of newly learned information within a day and up to 90% after a week. Those results have been replicated by more modern studies, and remain a fundamental concept in learning and memory studies.

Math formulas we learned in our youth can be hard to recall because they’re abstract. Also, most of us weren’t hearing or applying them outside the classroom. In contrast, those cereal commercials stuck with us because they created the perfect storm of memory formation: 

• They engaged our emotions through fun characters and catchy jingles, 

• Repeated their messages multiple times a day, and 

• Delivered their content through multiple senses.

In short, they made learning effortless. 

Compare this to how we typically consume information today: We process around 75 gigabytes of data daily across endless emails, social media, chats, and documents. We often do this under pressure, with frequent interruptions and little emotional engagement. Our brains are designed to thrive on narrative and multi-sensory experiences. Instead, they face a constant bombardment of decontextualized information.

By naively assuming that conscious, controlled processing is the best approach, we neglect the dominant power of practice and habit to train circuits in the brain. While your body is sending a massive amount of information to your brain per second, you're only consciously able to process a fraction of it. So even if it’s obvious that bouncing around TikTok videos isn’t ideal for long-term memory, reading a research paper in a quiet room isn’t necessarily the key either.

Would you build a whole house with just a hammer, knowing that you have a pile of other necessary tools right in front of you? We assume your answer to this question is no. So why would we enforce a one-size-fits-all approach to education, centered around standard classrooms and learning materials, when there are so many other ways to learn?

Adaptive Learning: Tailored Education

There are concerns that reliance on technology like AI will cause our critical thinking and problem-solving skills to deteriorate. While this could occur, it depends on how you approach technology. What if instead of turning to AI to answer everything for us, we use it to reshape how we learn? At Lumiera, we believe in shaping technology to add to the human experience. Data is circulating around us in unprecedented volumes. We can harness that to engage our senses in transformative ways. Now more than ever, it’s possible to tailor education to each person's unique way of understanding and remembering information. This is also known as adaptive learning.

AI-powered learning tools can work with our brain's natural memory patterns to improve how we learn and retain information, a shift from traditional learning methods. For example, these systems can predict when you're about to forget something and prompt you to review it at just the right moment, helping your brain hold onto information that would normally fade away. Schools and universities might benefit from incorporating AI technologies to create more adaptive and responsive learning environments. The idea isn’t to replace human teachers but to complement their expertise while supporting the unique needs of students. 

We’re already seeing new, personalized approaches to teaching. Duolingo, the world’s leading mobile learning platform, uses adaptive learning technology to adjust the frequency and difficulty of language exercises based on the user’s performance. While it’s always been a tech company at its core, Duolingo has recently invested even further into AI, increasing ways to engage and promote learning through multiple modalities. They use AI to generate data for the platform, as well as for real-time conversations in both audio and video formats, and their new “adventures” AI feature allows users to explore dynamic settings and storylines. They borrow a page from those cereal commercials' playbook - using stories and engaging multiple senses to make learning stick.

Using Multiple Senses Increases Learning Efficiency

Multisensory learning has been shown to be particularly effective for those with neurodivergent conditions like dyslexia. Individuals with dyslexia typically have difficulty absorbing new information, especially if it is abstract or involves memorizing sequences or steps. Multisensory teaching techniques integrate the visual, auditory, tactile, and kinesthetic pathways simultaneously. This helps break down barriers to learning by making the abstract more concrete, turning lists or sequences into movements, sights and sounds. 

Data transformation beyond written language is not new. Let’s look at two innovations from the 1800s:

1. Braille is a system that transforms written text into a tactile format using raised dots.

2. Morse code transforms text characters into a standardized sequence of dots and dashes (audio or visual). ​​

If we can already use AI to turn voice into text, text into images, and feelings into numbers (sentiment analysis), we could use it to turn data into a multitude of sensations, allowing us to absorb and retain information in novel and impactful ways. For example, turning text or numbers into flavours. Imagine actually understanding what E = mc² means because you tasted it. 

So, what’s the conclusion? We could use AI to do our homework and dull our minds. Or, we could use it to encourage all the complex, sensational systems that make us human. Take your pick.

Until next time.
On behalf of Team Lumiera

Emma - Business Strategist
Allegra - Data Specialist

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