Throughout my time as an educator, which seemed to begin right at the cusp of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) emerging as a significant technological innovation, I have come to notice a particular trend in how my adult students interact with their educational materials. While in my first term, GenAI was only beginning to emerge and students were using GenAI for more fanciful purposes, by my second term, GenAI was being used to help students with schoolwork (and sometimes, producing entire assignments). While the topic of cheating with the use of GenAI seems to be prevalent and a consistent challenge, I instead want to focus on what I deem to be a positive of GenAI in adult education - that of increasing personalization in one’s educational pathway.
I have observed students using GenAI to help answer foundational questions around a particular industry or field; the questions I get from students, when I compare between my first and subsequent terms, seem more personalized, more specific, and more exploratory. Students have confirmed with me that they’re using tools such as ChatGPT and Copilot to help them explore their interests in digital marketing and careers related to digital marketing in specific industries (e.g. real estate, film, e-commerce). The Electronic Platform for Adult Learning in Europe (EPALE) credits this shift in adult education to AI’s “promise of personalization”, or AI’s “ability to tailor learning experiences to individual needs” (Özkan, 2024). While traditional adult education formerly was a static model (a one-size-fits-all approach), AI has enabled adaptive learning, meaning learners can now personalize their approach to education, and adjust “the content to match their strengths and weaknesses”, opening up lifelong learning pathways (Özkan, 2024). In another article, personalization in education is likened to the personalization found in many a modern business strategy,e.g. Netflix offering personalized product recommendations or Dell transforming personal computers by offering personalization; personalized education would allow learners to grow their unique strengths, interests and aspirations (Bhatnagar, 2024).
This can, however, pose challenges: firstly, learners may have differing levels of access to technology, and basic digital literacy may not be the same across all populations e.g. some students may understand how to engineer prompts effectively, while other students may still need a formal introduction to the use of GenAI (Özkan, 2024). Secondly, I posit that GenAI still contains problems with hallucinations or incorrect information; learners may unknowingly be deceived by incorrect information, and their personalized learning pathways could be negatively impacted. Additionally, personalized learning pathways still would require some level of foundational knowledge; while I believe there are certainly spaces to grow and adult learners could benefit from the immediate applicability of their education given the use of GenAI, results may vary if students were not provided the essentials and basic knowledge to build their pathways off of. Additionally, the reliance on developing one’s strengths may create further blind spots, by not encouraging learners to also address and be self-aware of their weaknesses.
These strengths and challenges of GenAI providing students with more personalized pathways presents opportunities and areas of improvement for my own instructional style. I firstly believe that I need to provide a solid foundation in their education; in my area of specialization, i.e. digital marketing and business, this requires me to ensure that students have fully learned the basics before encouraging them to look at ways they can personalize their education using GenAI. Secondly, as an educator, I believe that as students use GenAI to answer their own foundational questions, I am driven to also stay up-to-date on topics in marketing, business education, and trends, in order to provide students with guided insights, that GenAI may not be able to answer (e.g. my own experiences in the field, my own personal opinions and observations on digital marketing and digital business). I also believe that it’ll be important to teach students about the risks of GenAI, e.g. the possible misinformation or hallucinations that can occur, and how students can look into double-checking this work. And lastly, as an educator learning alongside students, I believe it is also important to experiment with and test the extent of GenAI when it comes to developing personalized pathways and answer personalized questions - I would want to know for myself, what do GenAI tools get right about the industry? What are some prompts I can experiment with to help students explore their own career paths? What does GenAI typically get wrong and get right when asking more personalized questions that have to do with my lecture materials?
References
Bhatnagar, V. R. (2024, November 5). The future of education is personalized. AACSB. https://www.aacsb.edu/insights/articles/2024/10/the-future-of-education-is-personalized
Özkan, M. (2024, October 17). Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Adult Education: Bridging the Gap Between Technology and Lifelong Learning. EPALE - Electronic Platform for Adult Learning in Europe. May 22, 2025, https://epale.ec.europa.eu/en/blog/artificial-intelligence-ai-adult-education-bridging-gap-between-technology-and-lifelong