From blackboards to algorithms: the rise of AI in Canadian classrooms

Mary Gooderham

Special to The Globe and Mail

Published December 12, 2024

Canada is advanced in the field of artificial intelligence research – home to computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton, the “Godfather of AI” who recently shared the Nobel Prize for his work on artificial neural networks – and is a global talent hub for AI expertise.

As one of the global leaders in AI innovation, Canada is also positioning itself as a pioneer in using AI to transform education. By combining cutting-edge research with a growing edtech sector, the country is reshaping how and where students of all ages learn. From virtual classrooms to AI-powered tutoring systems, the story of Canadian edtech is one of both opportunity and challenge.

Teaching AI skills and incorporating the technology into platforms for learning presents advantages for Canadian educators. From the elementary-school classroom to the shop floor and the corporate boardroom, innovative teaching techniques as well as educational technologies, known as edtech, could have a critical impact for the country.

“People learn in a whole bunch of different ways today, and we provide different ways to deliver that learning,” says Corrine Hua, chief financial officer of Thinkific Labs Inc., a Vancouver educational software firm, noting that there are many strong edtech companies in Canada. “We punch above our weight class in terms of the number of businesses that provide amazing technology to education.”

Started in 2012, today Thinkific helps entrepreneurs and businesses create, market and sell online courses and other learning products. The public company has 270 staff, most of them across Canada, and about 40 per cent of its business is international, with the rest in North America, she says. Creators in more than 165 countries use its products to publish courses in more than 40 languages.

Known as a learning management system, the platform provides AI-generated tools for people to create and deliver educational products online. This allows experts to teach courses on specific subjects, for example, while companies can offer tutorials on their products to customers, Ms. Hua explains. These include videos, live sessions, podcasts, translations, quizzes and games, and can be delivered on phones.

“In today’s world, not everyone wants the same classroom setting that we used to have decades ago. This gives us the ability to upskill or educate people in a format that they learn in best,” she says.

Ensuring equality in education

However, while platforms like these offer significant benefits, they also highlight broader systemic issues that affect education equity. Critics argue that an over-reliance on AI risks dehumanizing education and leaving underserved communities even further behind.

According to a Deloitte Canada report on digital equity, only 67 per cent of rural households and 50 per cent of Indigenous communities had access to minimum broadband speeds in 2022, creating significant barriers to adopting AI-driven educational tools.

The report also highlights that affordability challenges persist, with low-income households in cities like Toronto having fewer devices a person compared with the national average. Without consistent access to the internet and devices, critics warn, AI in education could deepen the digital divide instead of closing it.

Despite these challenges, proponents of AI-driven edtech highlight its flexibility and scalability as key benefits. Ms. Hua says that individual subject-matter experts as well as large companies looking to educate their staff and customers can use Thinkific’s flexible, scalable platform to “build an experience” for learners. “It leverages a ton of AI to help the creator of the education do it in a way that they want and to meet their students’ needs.”

Such online educational offerings have been changing how and where people learn. The shift from the blackboard to the keyboard accelerated with the COVID-19 pandemic, which brought demand for remote learning and skills development. At the same time, there’s a growing focus on the need for digital and AI literacy among learners working in or at the helm of companies, even the smallest ones that are the backbone of Canada’s economy.

“We’re seeing technology transform learning at all levels,” says Wendy Cukier, a professor of entrepreneurship and innovation and academic director of the Diversity Institute at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU).

AI’s role in content delivery

She says that AI plays a role “at every stage,” delivering efficient, customized educational content that can be tailored to individual needs. This “adaptive learning” assesses how the student interacts with academic material and adjusts pace and format, which can “remove barriers and make things a lot easier.” She says there are also AI-enabled tutoring systems developed in Canada to help students better absorb material.

Dr. Cukier is academic research director of the Future Skills Centre at TMU, which is aimed at addressing gaps in digital skills, especially among Canada’s diverse populations. “Everyone needs basic AI literacy,” she says.

For example, the Advanced Digital and Professional Training program helps postsecondary school graduates from varied academic and cultural backgrounds learn technology skills and offers career support. “It doesn’t focus on engineers and computer scientists, it focuses on English majors and history grads,” Dr. Cukier says.

Meanwhile Camp Tech, a company in Toronto, provides training in digital marketing, artificial intelligence and tech skills to small businesses and not-for-profit organizations.

“Canada is leading the charge when it comes to AI research, but research doesn’t drive actual day-to-day adoption,” explains Avery Swartz, the company’s founder and CEO.

Her workshops give people confidence to deal with emerging technologies “and an understanding of where to go next,” she says. After just a few hours, many people “operationalize what they’ve learned right away,” getting to work on everything from customer-service newsletters and social-media posts to business analyses that use AI tools like ChatGPT.

As Canada’s edtech sector grows, policymakers must address emerging challenges. These include ensuring equal access to technology, implementing safeguards against misuse of AI, and fostering public trust through transparency and accountability in AI-enabled education tools.

Darian Kovacs founded Jelly Academy six years ago in Fort Langley, B.C., to help people train for what he calls “new collar” jobs in digital marketing, with titles like search engine optimization co-ordinator, media buyer, growth-marketing manager and e-commerce manager. Today the courses are taught entirely online as a nine-week bootcamp developed on the Thinkific platform.

“We have students all over the world. It’s been amazing,” says Mr. Kovacs, educational director of the school, which he says has a long waiting list of students who want to get in.

Learning and the art of engagement

Jelly Academy and Mr. Kovacs’s larger company, Jelly Digital Marketing & PR, are getting into other such efforts, including an online digital marketing career-prep program for students in Grade 12, now available in B.C. and Alberta. And it has developed digital literacy programs aimed at Indigenous communities in Canada and abroad.

Platforms for delivering such educational programming in Canada are also expanding given new capabilities. Virtro Technology Inc. in Vancouver makes “immersive” systems where “AI virtual humans” or characters can have on-screen “conversations” with users. This can help them learn a language, develop specialized terminology for employment like health care and practise for job interviews or corporate sales pitches.

“Learning isn’t about sitting back, passively receiving information, it’s about the art of engagement,” says Lee Brighton, co-founder and chief strategy officer of Virtro. The company started in 2017 and had as many as 50 staff when it was developing its technology. Today it has five employees with a plan to market its systems to the general public, beginning next spring.

Ms. Brighton says educators are increasingly looking at the use of virtual humans for teaching, but the goal is to really engage learners in the material. “You can’t put people in front of a virtual English or French or history teacher who’s just talking. I want real communication,” she says.

Ms. Hua says one of the biggest challenges for learning using edtech is “getting through the sheer volume of content that’s available to find something that’s quality, where you actually can gain a skill.”

Learners benefit most if they can relate to the content, which “happens best in the community,” she says, allowing people to interact with like-minded individuals or the instructor. Thinkific is bringing opportunities for such experiences onto its platform, and Ms. Hua sees a future where course participants can talk to each other, for instance.

Ms. Swartz expects that “within two years there will be artificial intelligence baked into every single tech application,” but people should be aware of its implications and use it in “a thoughtful and ethical way.” For example, AI systems can be used to violate copyright and spread disinformation.

They also often come with “algorithmic bias,” so the content reflects the implicit values of those who created it, for instance illustrations created using AI may only feature white characters, she says. “We teach people how to meet those challenges as they come up.”

As Canada’s edtech sector grows, policymakers and educators are tasked with addressing challenges such as ensuring equal access to technology, combatting algorithmic bias and fostering ethical use of AI tools. Collaboration between innovators and educators will be key to ensuring that no learner is left behind in this shift.

Ms. Hua sees an opportunity to redefine how education is delivered globally: “People come from different parts of the world, different specialties, different desires for the ways they want to learn, and we can meet them all. It doesn’t have to be narrowed down to just, ‘What did I learn in a formal education setting?’ And I think we’re very fortunate to have that.”