Communication platforms have fundamentally changed how education is delivered, enabling teaching and learning to take place from virtually anywhere. These tools have transformed how students access assignments, collaborate with peers and interact with their schools and universities. The digital classroom is now a well-established part of modern education.
Building on this foundation, artificial intelligence (AI) has taken education a step further. Generative AI is transforming how content is created and personalised, while the emergence of agentic AI, which can carry out tasks independently, is helping to automate routine work and provide real-time support. From personalised tutoring and lesson planning to generating study guides and supporting administrators behind the scenes, AI is becoming a valuable tool for both students and educators.
With AI now integrated into everyday platforms, the learning experience is becoming more dynamic, responsive and inclusive. These technologies are not replacing educators, but pushing their ability to deliver engaging, tailored learning while freeing up time to focus on what matters most – teaching and supporting students.
The ultimate teaching assistant
AI works like a ‘personal assistant’ to teachers, automatically taking care of tasks such as live transcription and note-taking during lessons. Teachers and lecturers rarely want students to have to copy down everything they say in lessons or spend time painstakingly copying diagrams from a whiteboard. They want students to engage with the content, focus fully on the lesson, and interact with them as educators. With agentic AI, students know a transcript will be provided, along with a summary broken down into key facts and action points without needing to prompt.
For educators, agentic AI offers a wide range of tools to make the learning process more engaging and effective. For instance, AI agents can create study guides directly from transcripts of lessons and generate quizzes instantly based on the lessons to test students’ knowledge. In advance of lessons, agentic AI can assist in developing storytelling prompts to boost student involvement and help streamline research for lesson planning. While it won’t replace the vital role of teachers, AI provides valuable support.
Homing in on learning gaps
AI tools can also help teachers home in on learning gaps, identifying what a student knows and what they should know at their level, and support students who might be falling behind. For example, chatbots can be on hand for students to ask questions during a lesson if they are failing to understand a topic. AI tools can also help students engage with content after the lesson, offering expanded explanations, alternative examples, and case studies to aid learnings.
During lessons, educators can rely on agentic AI to autonomously generate tailored activities in real time, enabling students who have already grasped the content to reinforce their understanding while the teacher focuses on those who need additional support.
The ultimate learning assistant
AI-powered collaboration tools, from live captions to smart recordings, mean that today’s students can engage with lessons in a way that has never been possible before, offering greater levels of accessibility and autonomy. Students can revisit lesson recordings and transcripts and use AI chatbots to generate study guides directly from those materials.
They can easily catch up on lectures and ‘zoom in’ on the subject with anecdotes and examples generated by AI. They can also quickly look up definitions of jargon and acronyms used in class, making complex material easier to understand. With AI students can maximise their productivity, focus on the areas they find most challenging, and receive tailored support – even outside of normal school hours. Meanwhile, educators are freed to focus on higher-value tasks such as mentoring or curriculum design. Institutions can also customise their AI agents to pull only from institutional data, ensuring students receive accurate, relevant, and personalised coaching.
Going beyond the classroom
AI is also transforming how educational institutions operate. For administrators and staff, AI can automate time-consuming tasks, freeing up valuable resources. AI tools streamline communications, manage student records, and track attendance and performance metrics in real-time. This not only increases operational efficiency but also helps institutions proactively identify trends, address issues such as absenteeism or disengagement, and make more informed decisions about resource allocation.
By reducing administrative overhead, AI empowers staff to focus more on building supportive, student-centred environments that drive long-term success.
A smarter future
Looking ahead, AI will integral to the education sector. Over time, the rise of agentic AI will help create classrooms that are more personalised, inclusive, and interactive. Teachers will be able to rely on a “classroom assistant” to enhance their lessons, students’ learning will become more flexible, engaging, and accessible. Meanwhile, school administrators will gain greater capacity to create the best possible learning environment.
The education of the future will still be delivered by humans, but agentic AI will play a vital role in the learning process.
