AI in Education Survey: Exclusive Slidesgo Insights of AI Tools for Education

What a statement to begin with, right? Well, 70.7% of the surveyed teachers find AI tools beneficial for the education sector. So, among the 750+ teachers, to the question “Do you consider generative Artificial Intelligence tools beneficial or detrimental to Education?”, 7 out of 10 answered “Beneficial”. If artificial intelligence is helping them in their daily work, it’s only natural that they embrace this new resource. As to why they consider AI in education beneficial, we’ll get to that later.

Now, in order to use AI, you must first know that they exist! How about our surveyed teachers? 61.5% of them answered that they have used generative AI tools in the last three months. Perhaps the fact that they knew about Slidesgo has been a helping factor, since we already offer some AI tools for our users? Maybe!

So, we’ve already said that 70.7% of the surveyed teachers find AI beneficial. What about the quality of the daily work as a teacher? Did it improve? 71% of them think so! We can think of several reasons: better planning, getting ideas for lessons…

As for the main reason to use AI tools, the answers were a mixed bag, but we’d like to highlight the most popular answer, which was saving time. Some find AI useful for finding inspiration and others state that AI tools help minimize the “blank-page” syndrome—you know, that moment of your life when you need to start writing a paper, article or slide and, even though the ideas are in your mind, you cannot seem to put them into words. The latter seems to be related to the time-saving concept, so… can we conclude that the clock is a higher threat than AIs? Jokes aside, here’s some infographics showing this data:

Alright. We now know that teachers do use AI. They’re slowly becoming one more tool in their repertoire, just like pens, notebooks, blackboards, chalk or presentations—we can’t forget about presentations, can we?

The first thing that a majority of our surveyed teachers stated is that generative AI tools for education can be used to enhance interaction with students. Not only that, but they’re leveraging the power of these advanced tools to create highly personalized educational content, tailored to meet the unique learning needs of each student. Isn’t it amazing to know that, knowing what your students’ needs are, an AI can help you fine tune your lesson so that they can make the most of it?

There’s a little misconception that we need to take care of: the work of a teacher isn’t limited to just “teaching”. Gosh, no! We can picture hundreds of teachers shaking their heads right now… Administrative tasks are a big part of a teacher’s work, so, in an enthusiastic nod to the efficiency of AI, a notable 73.5% of our surveyed teachers have reported that AI has been instrumental in reducing the time they spend on these tasks. Scheduling and planning seem to be less tedious things when using AI. The benefit derived from this is clear: teachers are able to channel this newfound time and energy into enhancing the learning experience for their students.

AI helps streamline day-to-day tasks and save time

It seems a little bit over-the-top to highlight this, but teachers didn’t just answer some questions. They gave us their own opinion, with their own words, to help us understand what they’re thinking:

• I am finding [AI] as a time saver. The more I explore the more resources I see that will benefit my students and myself.
• One thing teachers do not have enough of: time. AI saves us TIME, which is precious. Less time doing menial tasks for building presentations or unit outlines means more time giving enriching feedback, talking to parents, and *gasp* leaving work on time!
• [AIs] help me save time pre-teaching, so I can focus on HOW to actually teach it and help my students with issues they might have.

We heartily felt that “leaving work on time” statement. In a hectic world like today’s, finding the right balance between work and family is difficult. From the outside, people might not realize all the work “behind the scenes” that teachers carry out. They simply do not leave school after giving the last lesson for the day. Are these testimonials a hint that AIs are helping teachers find some air to breathe, metaphorically speaking?

• I can make lesson plans concise, I can implement my creative ideas quicker, organize my thoughts, and present ideas in a more organized/accessible/beautiful fashion to students.
• It simplifies my research. I don't have to search the web for answers or resources. I can go straight to a source that will answer any question or generate the exact image I want.

We have no doubts about it: AIs are streamlining some of the teachers’ work and, definitely, are helping them save precious time.

Take a moment and imagine this: a world where teachers use AI tools not just to create engaging content, but also to smoothly run their classes, draw inspiration for assignments, and even whip up riveting presentations. Wait, isn’t that the present time?

Going back to our survey, we’ve asked teachers what they use AI tools for. Plain and simple.

Planning Lessons and Searching for Ideas

Textbooks are great and all, but students shouldn’t just limit themselves to memorizing only what appears on them. There’s more out there! The teacher can tell them more about the topic, the subject or the day’s lesson.

53.5% of the surveyed teachers answered that their main use for AI in education is to organize their classes. No second thought about it! 46.5% of them also answered that AIs help them find some inspiration when preparing assignments for their students. This, combined with some creativity on the teacher’s end, can result in very interesting projects that students may need to complete. This also encourages students to think outside the box and be a bit more proactive and, well, creative when completing these assignments. But that’s great for them, isn’t it? They won’t be just “memorizing machines”, but critical thinkers.

Using AI to Create Presentations

This is Slidesgo. What is our main content? Presentations! We already know that a good part of our user base is composed of people from the education world. Many of our most popular templates are used for lessons—goes without saying that we even have ready-made presentations for various educational levels, available in different languages.

Templates are essential when it comes to saving time. There it is again: saving time. The pattern is clear to us, and when we decided to introduce our AI Presentation Maker to the world, it was for two main reasons: helping our users save time (excuse us for sounding like a broken record) and lending a hand to those who are not tech-savvy.

The survey also says that most of the teachers take between 1 and 2 hours to create a presentation for their class. Is it too much? The thing is that, if you can create presentations faster without noticing a drop in quality, then it’s a plus. What happens if they use our AI Presentation Maker? According to them, the time is reduced to 30 minutes or less. Now we’re talking!

• It saves me time and brain capacity.

What an impactful quote! And we swear it’s from one of the surveyed people.

Ah, the million-dollar question. While we’re busy singing the praises of AI in education, let’s not forget that every superhero has its kryptonite, and for AI, it’s the challenges associated with its integration into the education sector.

From what we’ve gathered in our survey, the main reason for not using AIs is, unsurprisingly, not knowing how to use them. So, yeah, there’s ChatGPT, there’s Midjourney, there’s Dall-E, but having them at your fingertips is one thing, and mastering them is another. It’s something that takes time, and we already know that teachers don’t have much of that to spare (although, in turn, AI will eventually reduce the time they take to do some tasks). This can be perceived as an endless loop: if they don’t have enough time to learn to use AIs, those AIs will never be able to free them some time (which could be used to learn to use AIs, as they’re able to free you some time, but you didn’t have enough time to begin with).

Applying them to their daily tasks as teachers is another reason why AIs are not more in use, at least in education. Perhaps AIs can generate interesting content, but is it something that can be easily taught? Some generative tools can give you images, but are they accurate enough regarding what you need to teach?

It’s also important to note that 22% of the surveyed teachers believe that, while generative AI tools can be used for teaching, they don’t know how to prevent students from misusing it. How to really tell whether the student really learned the concepts if an AI did the work for them?

Probably, one of the key ideas here is dialogue. How about schools encouraging discussions about the use of AI in education? This can help students understand the reasons behind the rules and spark meaningful conversations about AI ethics. 

If the assignments are carried out at school, monitoring systems can be put in place to track potential misuse of AI tools. This could involve the use of analytics to identify unusual patterns in student work, or the incorporation of software that can detect AI-generated content.

A common question popping up every now and then, next to “What jobs will AI replace?”. While AI is certainly flexing its muscles in the realm of education, do we really think that it will be able to replace the human touch of a teacher? Sure, AIs might process vast amounts of data, provide personalized learning experiences, and even serve up fresh content faster than a cafeteria lunch. But, and you’ll agree with us, teachers aren’t just information dispensers to be replaced by a newer, shinier model. They are counselors, mediators, inspirers, and life-guides. This, no AI can replicate. 

We’re no Richard Dawson, but we feel the urge to say that SURVEY SAYS… that 64% of the teachers who took the time to answer our questions believe that AIs won’t be a replacement for human educators, at least in the short term.

From their own point of view:

• I’ve been using educational platforms and apps powered by AI for improving my students’ reading, writing, speaking, listening and grammar skills for two years, and I’m so far satisfied with the results. Students still need the human approach to education, the person-to-person interaction with teachers and peers. Online educational resources cannot provide the desired results for our students if there isn’t a teacher applying his or her critical thinking and problem-solving knowledge to help students perform well with this kind of technology. Teacher’s job in the classroom matters pretty much.
• A teacher can never be completely replaced because AI doesn’t truly understand the context of info being put in front of a student [in the case of Google Translator.]

From what we’ve gathered thanks to our survey, we can conclude that AI is slowly finding its way into the daily work of teachers, helping them with administrative work, and also serving as inspiration or content generators for lessons.

The main benefits of AI in education are, mainly, saving time and streamlining the planning process of future lessons, reducing the mental stress that teachers are subject to in a demanding field such as education. They are not seen as a threat, that is, a replacement for human teachers in the short run, but some teachers can’t help but think of the difficulty in preventing the misuse of AI by their students. They also find it a bit difficult to properly get the AI to do what it’s been asked to. 

What are your conclusions about this? Are you familiar with generative AIs and all the possibilities that they have to offer? Do you use them often or, on the other hand, are they something that makes you tremble? We would like to hear from you, so please follow us on our socials and share your opinion! Additionally, you might want to check out our article on how to generate good prompts to generate AI presentations, especially if you’d like to use our AI Presentation Maker!

Please note that 776 teachers participated in the survey from October 30 to November 13, 2023, mainly from North America. The primary objective was to gather teachers’ and educators’ perceptions of AI in education and the use of AI tools to enhance the teaching community. A total of 7493 respondents participated, including 776 who identified as teachers.