A conceptual framework for human–AI hybrid adaptivity in education

Abstract

Educational AI (AIEd) systems are increasingly designed and evaluated with an awareness of the hybrid nature of adaptivity in real-world educational settings. In practice, beyond being a property of AIEd systems alone, adaptivity is often jointly enacted by AI systems and human facilitators (e.g., teachers or peers). Despite much recent research activity, theoretical and conceptual guidance for the design of such human–AI systems remains limited. In this paper we explore how adaptivity may be shared across AIEd systems and the various human stakeholders who work with them. Based on a comparison of prior frameworks, which tend to examine adaptivity in AIEd systems or human coaches separately, we first synthesize a set of dimensions general enough to capture human–AI hybrid adaptivity. Using these dimensions, we then present a conceptual framework to map distinct ways in which humans and AIEd systems can augment each other’s abilities. Through examples, we illustrate how this framework can be used to characterize prior work and envision new possibilities for human–AI hybrid approaches in education.