This post is part of Sci-Fi Scenarios, the foresight series on teachonline.ca in which leaders in education and technology respond to five “sci-fi–sounding but plausible” AI futures.
We asked contributors to review five AI-driven scenarios for higher education (2025–2035), pick the one they find most compelling and explain why, and then add one future scenario of their own.
Below is the response from Dr. Som Naidu, one of the leaders we invited to comment.
The Scenario Dr. Som Naidu Selected From our Five Futures is “Cognitive Twins for Every Learner”
“Cognitive twins for every learner” and “autonomous feedback engines”.
- “Cognitive twins” and “autonomous feedback engines” are AI-based applications, either standalone or embedded in LMS that will be able to help learners with their learning and learning achievement.
Key Features
- Able to provide just-in-time supports through strategies such as Socratic dialogue.
- Able to help learners with a range of higher-order cognitive tasks such as summarizing and synthesizing, problem identification and problem solving
Likelihood: High
- AI is already being used to build tools able to provide many of these kinds of supports to learners, and they are getting better at it. These include tools such as ChatGPT, NotebookLM, MS Co-Pilot, et al.
Strategic Value
- Learners need all kinds of help, not only with discipline-based knowledge, but with effective and efficient use of a growing list of learning technologies, as well as with their motivation and self-regulation strategies.
- As learning becomes more just-in-time and on demand, AI tools can be used to provide learners with help and feedback, especially where human agency is limited or unavailable.
Why It Matters
- As their sophistication grows over time, these tools will be able to help learners not only with their understanding of the subject matter, but with self-regulation of their learning strategies.
The New Future Scenario Som Envisions himself is “Socratic Co-Pilot for Every Teacher”
What It Is
While there is growing interest in how AI can be directed at improving student learning with tools such as Cognitive twins and Feedback engines, similar levels of interest in investigating how AI can be used to support teachers and the various acts of teaching seems to be lacking.
Teaching is about enabling learners to go into a zone beyond what they can do by themselves. Vygotsky called this, the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). Teaching is about assisting learners move into this zone and go beyond with targeted structure and guidance.
In order to be effective and efficient in this role, teachers must possess, along with advanced subject matter knowledge, high levels of competency in the use of a growing list of learning technologies as well as pedagogical knowledge in the design, development and execution of productive learning experiences.
But teachers, and especially those in the tertiary sector, do not come with satisfactory levels of competency in all of these areas. Most get appointed to their teaching roles for their advanced subject matter knowledge, and rarely for commensurate levels of pedagogical and technological knowledge.
As long as this remains the case, the need to address the professional development needs of teachers around their pedagogical and technological knowledge remains critical. Most institutions seek to address this deficit with the help of “third space staffing” with the appointment of instructional designers, media producers and educational technologists usually employed in centrally located academic service units. While helpful, the rollout of this kind of support is rarely adequate or uniform, and as long as this is the case, teachers and teaching will remain compromised, and ineffective.
Enter AI…How It Works
Imagine every teacher having access to a personalized AI agent, a co-pilot, which is accessible at the teacher’s beck and call, not to take over or share their workload, but as a mentor, guide, and sounding board. There is nothing untoward about this. Every professional needs a mentor, someone with the same or additional skills that a professional can chat with, confide in, and seek feedback from, as and when necessary. Most professionals and artists do this all the time. For example, they ask people to read what they may have written or composed, observe their practice and offer critical observations, or help with something with which they may be struggling.
Most tertiary educators are teachers first, along with being researchers. While they possess advanced subject matter knowledge, many will lack the requisite technological and pedagogical knowledge, or the time and resources to acquire and keep abreast with it. It would be immensely helpful to explore how AI can be used to support teachers in their professional practice.
AI-Based Socratic Co-Pilot for Every Teacher
Key Features
- Capacity to offer teachers help with their pedagogical and technological knowledge.
- Capacity to provide teachers help and assistance with their domain-specific knowledge as well.
- Long-term and growing memory of a teacher’s academic development trajectory, and capacity to diagnose, understand and help with a teacher’s professional development needs.
Likelihood: High
- As teaching becomes increasingly open, flexible, and required on-demand, the contemporary teaching space is becoming increasingly challenging.
- In order to be effective and efficient in this complex learning space, teachers need just-in-time help with, not only with their subject matter knowledge, but with innovative approaches to pedagogy and competence with a growing list of technologies.
Strategic Value: High
- As most tertiary teachers come to the teaching profession without adequate technological and pedagogical knowledge, and while educational institutions generally lack the staffing and resources to support tertiary teachers with their professional development needs in an increasingly complex learning and teaching space, leveraging off of the power of AI seems sensible.
Why It Matters
- Gives every teacher a “mentor” without encroaching on the role of human agency.
- Reduces pressure on institutions to provide additional staffing and resources for the professional development needs of their teachers.
