Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur (IIT Kharagpur) professor Plaban Kumar Bhowmick, from the Department of Artificial Intelligence and principal investigator of the National Digital Library of India, has highlighted a crucial distinction between cognitive offloading and cognitive scaffolding in the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in education.
The future of learning, IIT Kharagpur said, is not about AI thinking for students but about AI helping them think for themselves.
“We do something that we call cognitive scaffolding, where we put up a structure within which the student feels supported. Now, AI can take a problem given by a student and solve it on the student’s behalf. So, the question is whether AI in this form is actually helping the student. “The AI is doing the job for the student, and the learning goal is not really achieved. But if we think of AI as a form of cognitive scaffolding, the student does the entire job while the AI provides support. That is where the Fermi AI Tutor comes in. It supports students in problem-solving while they work through the problems on their own. The AI tutor supports the student but does not solve the problem for them,” he added. “What this AI tutor brings to students is a coaching companion, a teaching companion. It does not just solve problems or support students in solving them; it transforms students. This kind of AI is not merely a tool. The institute added that students are already engaging with the platform and returning to learn more, demonstrating Fermi AI’s potential as a teaching companion rather than merely an answer-generating tool.
Because this is what we call cognitive offloading or cognitive hijacking, in my view, it is not really helping.
Basically, there is no learning happening in this scenario,” he said. It is becoming the future of learning,” he said. The future of learning, it said, is not about AI thinking for students but about AI helping them think for themselves.
