Amid a surge of interest in career exploration and alternatives to college, advocates for career-technical education see potential for technology — specifically artificial intelligence — to expand career-technical course options.
Supporters say AI could enhance workplace simulations, match students with apprenticeship programs, and help tailor curriculum to career-focused needs.
Investors in education companies have taken notice of AI’s potential in CTE. A recent report published by the European ed-tech venture capital firm Brighteye Ventures explored what the authors see as the technology’s capability to create an array of new career-technical education options.
While the technology is nascent in the sector, as it evolves, the authors see potential applications that include personalizing lessons to individual student interests, improved assessments, and new ones to keep students engaged in lessons.
“Vocational programs serve a diverse audience, including young adults entering the workforce and older individuals seeking career changes, requiring a flexible and adaptable learning approach,” the report says.
“Personalized pathways and broader AI-driven solutions have the potential to make a significant impact.”
Michael Connet, the associate deputy executive director of outreach and partner development for the Association for Career and Technical Education, said there’s a major interest in schools in tapping into AI’s power to give students greater access to more specialized instruction focused on individual careers.
Every conference he’s been to recently has had sessions about how AI could reshape vocational education, said Connet. His nonprofit organization represents educators, administrators, and others focused on CTE at all levels of education.
But Connet said that companies trying to bring AI into career-focused lessons need to find ways to use the technology to expand students’ ability to explore an array of careers, not limit them.
“To try to put a one-size-fits-all on a product or a service is to really miss the power of what AI can [provide] in individualization and targeting instruction for different levels of learners,” Connet said.
To try to put a one-size-fits-all on a product or a service is to really miss the power of what AI can [provide] in individualization and targeting instruction for different levels of learners.
Michael Connet, associate deputy executive director of outreach and partner development, Association for Career and Technical Education
Bringing CTE to Completion
Career-technical education programs, sometimes called vocational education, have traditionally struggled with high rates of students at risk of dropping out before completion.
One of the main reasons students quit programs early is that they lose focus and don’t understand what they need to cover by the end of their courses in order to qualify for a future career, said Rhys Spence, head of platform and research at Brighteye Ventures.
AI can play a role in providing comprehensive data on student engagement and on areas where their subject-area knowledge is weak, before those students move on to more advanced, workforce-based curriculum, the report says.
“That can really boost engagement and morale in the short term,” said Spence. “AI can, in theory, bring a more immediate ROI than lots of other technologies that were previously in place.”
AI can be incorporated within apprenticeships and immersive learning experiences to bring learners closer to the reality of the day-to-day work.
The technology can also be woven into career-focused augmented reality and virtual reality applications. Students can be given intelligent prompts within those immersive experiences based on how they’re interacting with that system, Spence said.
The goal is to create AI models that make “learning more valuable, more tailored, and more memorable for the student, in the sense that it’s prompting you to remember specific elements of something you’d find more challenging,” he said.
A similar model can be established once those students have completed their training and are on the job and need to continue to build and refresh their skills.
Those on-the-job applications could, in theory, lead to “a much better retention of staff” in different areas, Spence said.
Other areas in which AI can help streamline processes, according to the report, include matching students’ strengths to job placements, as well as reducing costs by using AI-driven simulations rather than expensive physical mockups or setups for student training.
Vendors who are trying to gauge AI’s value in career-technical education need to focus on the needs of specific industries, Spence said.
Artificial intelligence applications of CTE need to be tailored to “the requirements of a specific course, because the [more closely] the solution is linked to the industry, the better the outcomes of students,” he said. AI-enhanced programs also need to be “tightly aligned with any industry standards.”
AI’s value to school districts and other CTE providers will depend in part on whether it can help students explore a variety of careers but also give them job-specific expertise that employers demand, now and in the future.
“You’ve got to figure out where those pain points are that the customized, generative solutions, can provide … and that can [create] some really fundamental changes happening in CTE,” Connet said. Ideally, the technology should support “taking people out of their silos, while drilling down deeper in specializations.”
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