Each year, the UNESCO King Hamad Bin Isa Al-Khalifa Prize, supported by UNESCO and the Kingdom of Bahrain, rewards the best technological innovations to improve children’s education. For the 2020 edition, the Chinese programme “One College Student Per Village” and the Finnish collaborative education platform “ViLLE” are the two winners of the prize.
The Chinese program and the Finnish platform have one thing in common: both use artificial intelligence to improve the quality of a child’s learning and keep him or her in educational continuity. An international jury of experts composed of five international members, recognized in the field of information and communication technologies but also in the field of education, deliberated at length to award the prize. The jury was composed of :
- Ibrahima GUIMBA-SAÏDOU, Minister-Special Advisor to the President of the Republic of Niger, Director General of the National Agency for the Information Society.
- Ryad Y. HAMZAH, President of the University of Bahrain.
- Inge MOLENAAR, Lecturer in the Learning and Plasticity Group of the Institute of Behavioural Sciences of the Radboud University of Nijmegen.
- Hyo-Jeong SO, Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Technology at Ewha University for Women.
- Werner WESTERMANN, Director of the Civic Education Programme of the National Library of Congress of Chile.
The first winner was the Centre for Learning Analytics of the University of Turku, Finland with the collaborative education platform “ViLLE”. This platform offers a set of personalized exercises according to the students’ performance. At the same time, teachers receive detailed reports on the progress of their students. These learning analyses are based on artificial intelligence and the use of databases.
The second winner is theOpen University of China with its “One College Student Per Village ” program. The program uses artificial intelligence to perform speech and semantic analysis, automatic grading of student essays, automatic feedback and megadata analysis. This allows students in rural and remote areas to have quality learning opportunities while being assessed.
Translated from L’UNESCO dévoile les lauréats du Prix UNESCO-Roi Hamad Bin Isa Al-Khalifa pour l’utilisation de l’intelligence artificielle dans l’éducation
