Digital Learning and AI: Why the Future of Education Is Not Simply Digital

AI and Digital Learning, Verbalists student — Photos: Verbalists Education & Language Network

Digital learning is becoming a normal part of education, but students still want paper, handwriting, real teachers, and fewer distractions. From a teacher’s perspective, that makes perfect sense.

Speak Your Mind! 🎯 “Digital Learning and AI: Why the Future of Education Is Not Simply Digital” by Rada Stojsin

Published October 16, 2026

I have been teaching English long enough to see several “revolutions” in education arrive with very big promises. First it was computers. Then interactive whiteboards, online learning platforms, mobile apps, digital classrooms and, more recently, artificial intelligence. Every time a new technology appears, the same question seems to come back: will this change education completely?

My feeling, both as a teacher and simply as someone who spends a lot of time around students, is that we may be asking the wrong question. The more useful question is much simpler: Does this help the student learn better?

That is why I found recent research from Oxford University Press particularly interesting. It suggests that students and teachers are not really choosing between “digital” and “traditional” learning anymore. They are using both, often very pragmatically. Sometimes a laptop is the best tool. Sometimes AI is useful. Sometimes nothing beats a notebook and a pen. And sometimes the best thing you can do for a student is ask them to put the phone away.

Students want more digital learning, but they also want less screen time

One finding from the OUP research immediately caught my attention. More than half of the students surveyed, 53%, said they wanted more digital learning. At the same time, 42% said they already spend too much time looking at screens.

At first, that sounds contradictory. From a teacher’s perspective, it really is not. Students know the difference between using a screen to do something useful and simply being on a screen. Practising vocabulary online, researching a topic, watching a good explanation or using an interactive exercise is not the same as scrolling through social media for an hour.

We tend to put all of this into one box called “screen time”, but students do not necessarily experience it that way. And neither should we.

A better way to look at it is to ask:

What is the student actually doing on the device?
How focused are they?
Is the activity helping them understand, practise or create something?
Or is the device mainly pulling their attention in five directions at once?

That is a far more useful discussion than simply counting hours.

Young people have not suddenly fallen out of love with paper

There is another assumption I hear often: young people want everything on a screen. My experience says otherwise.

Students still write things down. They still underline. They still make handwritten notes before an exam. Some remember vocabulary better when they physically write it. Others prefer reading longer texts on paper because they concentrate better.

The OUP study found exactly this kind of behaviour. Students regularly chose paper for note-taking, revision, reading, mathematics and exam preparation when they felt it worked better. At the same time, they use digital tools heavily for homework, research and presentations.

That feels very natural to me. Students are not trying to prove that paper is better than technology or that technology is better than paper. They simply want something that works.

If writing a new word three times helps you remember it, write it. If an online dictionary gives you pronunciation, examples and context in seconds, use it. If a video explains something more clearly than a textbook, watch it. And if your phone is destroying your concentration, put it somewhere you cannot reach it for twenty minutes.

There does not need to be an ideology behind every learning choice.

And then AI entered the classroom

Artificial intelligence has changed the discussion because it does much more than simply deliver content. It can explain, rewrite, translate, correct, suggest, summarize and answer questions almost instantly.

And students are already using it.

According to the OUP research, around two-thirds of students use AI chatbots for things such as improving work, preparing for exams, doing homework and finding information. Teachers are using it too. In fact, 82% of the teachers surveyed said they use AI chatbots for research or lesson preparation.

So I do not think the serious question anymore is whether students “should” use AI. That discussion has already been overtaken by reality.

They are using it.

The question now is whether they are learning how to use it intelligently.

AI can help students enormously, but it can also make things too easy

As an English teacher, I can see the benefits immediately. A student can ask for ten examples of a grammar structure, practise a conversation, ask why one sentence sounds natural and another one does not, check a piece of writing, get vocabulary suggestions or ask for an explanation in simpler English.

That kind of access would have seemed extraordinary not so long ago.

But there is also something I would not want students to lose: the effort involved in learning. Sometimes students need to struggle with a sentence. They need to look for the right word. They need to make a mistake, think about it and try again. They need to write something badly before they learn to write it well.

That can feel inefficient, but learning is not always supposed to feel efficient. Sometimes the mental effort is exactly what makes the learning stick.

This is where AI can become a problem if it is used badly. A student can now produce a polished paragraph in seconds without really knowing why it is good. They can get the answer without going through the thinking that normally leads to the answer.

So one question I increasingly think students need to ask themselves is:

Is AI helping me think, or is it thinking instead of me?

That distinction will matter more and more.

The real AI skill is not writing a clever prompt

There is a lot of discussion about “prompting” at the moment. Of course, knowing how to ask a clear question is useful. But I think we are in danger of making AI literacy sound much more technical than it really needs to be.

The most important skills are still very human ones:

Can you tell when an answer sounds suspicious?
Can you check the information somewhere else?
Can you recognize when something is missing?
Can you compare sources?
Can you explain the answer in your own words?
Do you actually understand what the AI has given you?

One finding from the Oxford research is particularly important here. Teachers were much more likely than students to say that they always check information generated by AI.

That gap worries me more than whether students know the latest AI tools. A student who knows how to verify information is in a much stronger position than someone who can write an impressive prompt but believes the first answer they receive.

“Digital native” is not the same as digitally capable

We often assume that young people automatically understand technology because they grew up with it. I have never found that argument very convincing.

Someone can be extremely comfortable with social media, messaging and short videos and still be surprisingly weak at basic digital tasks. They may struggle to organize files, evaluate a source, do serious online research, use a spreadsheet or work efficiently with a keyboard.

The OUP research even found teachers reporting that some students who are very comfortable with touchscreens struggle with traditional keyboard and mouse skills.

That is not really surprising. Using technology constantly does not automatically mean using it well.

There is a big difference between digital consumption and digital literacy. And with AI, that difference becomes even more important.

The biggest problem is often not technology. It is attention.

There is one thing teachers notice very quickly in a classroom: distracted students do not learn much.

It does not matter how good the app is or how advanced the platform is. If a student is checking messages, switching tabs, looking at notifications and half-following the lesson at the same time, very little deep learning is going to happen.

In the OUP research, 52% of teachers and 47% of students identified distraction as a major problem with digital learning.

That is a very believable finding. Technology gives students access to an incredible amount of useful material. It also gives them access to almost every possible distraction ever invented, through the same device.

So perhaps one of the most important digital skills we can teach young people has nothing to do with software. It is the ability to protect their attention: to finish one thing before starting another, turn notifications off, read something longer than a few paragraphs, stay with a difficult task for a little longer and, yes, sometimes close the laptop.

Where does all this leave the teacher?

This is the part of the AI discussion I find most interesting.

For years, new technology has been presented as something that might eventually make teachers less important. I think the opposite may happen.

When information is difficult to find, the teacher is valuable partly because they know things that the student does not. Today, information is everywhere. AI can explain almost anything immediately.

So the teacher’s role moves somewhere else.

The teacher helps the student decide what matters, what to trust, what they really understand, where they are avoiding effort, why one answer is stronger than another, when technology is useful and when it is getting in the way.

That requires judgement, experience and, importantly, knowing the student.

A teacher can see that a student is confused even when they say they understand. A teacher can notice that someone has become quieter, ask a different question, push someone a little harder, slow down, encourage them or make them explain something in their own words.

AI can be incredibly useful, but teaching has never been only about transferring information.

In language learning, the human part matters even more

Language education makes this particularly obvious.

We do not learn a language simply to know vocabulary and grammar rules. We learn it to speak to people, listen, misunderstand something and repair the conversation, joke, disagree, explain ourselves, pick up tone, understand culture and feel comfortable enough to keep talking even when the sentence is not perfect.

Technology can support all of this. AI can be an excellent practice partner. Apps can help students revise. Online lessons can connect people across countries. Digital tools can make language learning more flexible and accessible than ever.

But the final purpose of learning a language is still human communication. That is difficult to separate from human interaction.

The best classroom of the future may look surprisingly normal

I do not think the classroom of the future will be completely digital. I also do not think it will go backwards and reject technology.

It will probably be a mixture: AI when AI is useful, a screen when a screen is useful, a textbook when a textbook works better, pen and paper when writing something down helps, discussion when students need to hear different ideas, and silence when they need to concentrate.

That, to me, is the most interesting conclusion from the Oxford University Press research. They describe it as “outcome, not format.”

I think that is exactly right.

The smartest classroom is not the one with the most technology. It is the one where the teacher and the students know why they are using it, and also know when not to.

The future of learning will certainly be more digital. But good learning will still depend on concentration, curiosity, effort, judgement and human connection.

No technology has made any of those obsolete yet.

Sources and further reading:

About the Author

Radmila “Rada” Stojsin is an English language and literature teacher with more than 15 years of teaching experience. Her work with students and international education has taken her across Croatia, Serbia, China, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and the UK, including the unique experience of living and teaching abroad. Since 2023, she has been part of the Verbalists Education & Language Network as Coordinator of Language Programs for Young Learners. She also works with Verbalists’ parent company, PRODIREKT, on teacher training, school presentations, webinars, and university advising.

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