Artificial intelligence is entering more Australian classrooms, with a growing number of educators exploring the best ways to reduce their workload and support student learning.
More than 100 high schools recently tested a locally made generative AI tool to deliver feedback on students’ work, and the company behind it says the technology helped to improve their answers by almost 50 per cent.
The findings come after an inquiry into the use of generative AI in Australian education issued 25 recommendations in August, including its integration into curriculums, while also introducing safeguards for its use.
Technology provider Education Perfect conducted the latest AI test, analysing the experience of 15,000 students and more than 200,000 responses over 10 weeks.
The AI tool, which is an extension of the company’s existing software, analyses students’ answers to quiz questions and rates them out of five stars.
It also provides students with tips to help them achieve a higher score, such as using specific terminology and more detailed explanations, Education Perfect co-founder Shane Smith says.
The AI feedback reduced the burden on teachers and helped students lift the quality of their answers by 47 per cent, rising from a score of 2.4 stars to 3.6 on average.
The highlights of the trial results include:
- 47 per cent average improvement in students’ final response quality
- 87 per cent of students reengaged with the AI to improve low-scoring responses, with the tool’s “learning loop” encouraging students to refine their responses
- 69 per cent of students with low-scoring responses demonstrated deeper understanding by their final attempt.
Providing positive reinforcement through tech tools
To help address what it says is one of the biggest challenges teachers face – providing timely, high-quality feedback to every student – EP says its new AI tool gives real-time, personalised feedback designed to encourage students to continuously improve their responses, freeing up time for teachers to focus their attention on their students.
Smith says the feedback from teachers has been overwhelmingly positive, with those involved in the trial saying they were impressed with the quality of the AI tool’s feedback, and reporting that it is accurate, insightful, and amplifies their own impact.
Hillcrest Christian College in Victoria became one of the schools to test the technology in grades seven to 12, and campus deputy head Paul Lock says the response from students and teachers had been positive.
“The students weren’t having to put their hand up (and) wait for the teacher to finish with other people,” says Lock.
“That instant feedback in supporting their learning was really, really helpful.”
“The AI is integrated into our open-ended questions near the end of each lesson, which ask students to think more deeply about what they’ve just been taught, or to apply this knowledge to a new context or situation.
“In the past, after answering these questions students were asked to reflect and self-review their responses, and teachers could also give feedback. However, we found that because of teachers’ extremely intensive workloads, it simply wasn’t possible for them to provide feedback on all of these responses.
“Now, with the new AI feedback tool, students get personalised, actionable feedback on all of their responses in real time. The AI comments on what they did well, how they can improve, and even goes through and highlights any particularly strong or weak parts of their response to help the student easily see where they should focus their attention. In addition, students can have as many attempts at these questions as they need, receiving positive reinforcement for improvements and ongoing guidance about any mistakes they make.”
Ensuring teachers are still central to the teaching and learning process
To help ensure that teachers keen to utilise the AI tools experience a reduction in their workload, rather than a burden of managing extra training to understand the technology, Smith told EducationDaily that the AI feedback has been designed “to seamlessly integrate into existing teacher and student workflows, allowing students to benefit from it without requiring special training, while ensuring that teachers remain central to the teaching and learning process”.
As one example of this, he says the brand has received positive feedback about “how the AI has sparked questions and discussions in class, providing teachers with a foundation for deeper, collaborative exploration”.
“Our teacher insight reporting (coming soon) will provide AI-generated insights to teachers about common challenges their students are facing, along with recommendations to help bring these insights into the classroom to spark constructive conversations or deliver personalised extension and revision material.”
Smith told EducationDaily that, while the AI supports teachers by offering these insights, “teachers should continue to apply their professional judgement and knowledge of their students when analysing the AI-
generated data”.
“To assist with this, our reports will enable teachers to easily drill down into the underlying data to validate or further investigate the insights.”
Helping students consolidate their learning
At Hillcrest Christian College, Lock is a fan of finding ways to ease the workload teachers face in Australian classrooms. He told EducationDaily that “teachers spend a large amount of time attending to individual students’ questions relating to tasks and when students are consolidating their learning as well as supporting students to build on that knowledge”.
“Beyond the regular movement around a classroom, teachers have regular marking in order to support students with specific feedback to guide their improvements. The AI within Education Perfect’s software allows students to receive feedback on their responses at the time of learning,” Lock says.
“The extra time generated through these resources allows teachers to develop more teaching resources and targeted activities to support real-world practical activities.”
Lock acknowledges that it is important for teachers to use AI effectively to save them time, while also ensuring each individual student is seen, understood and supported by individualised help with their learning.
“AI is being utilised to complement traditional teaching methods of teacher directed instruction,” he says.
“Teachers can view student responses and AI-generated feedback to determine key areas to be reviewed and covered through their teaching.
“Where a standard size class is large enough for students to remain unseen, the AI supports teachers to find individual areas for improvement or gaps in students’ learning quickly and efficiently.
“AI allows teachers to differentiate work within the classroom and continue students’ learning to be targeted within the range of students’ knowledge and skill base.”
He says the technology can be used as a “flipped classroom or consolidation homework where students have the ability to get feedback without the teacher being present”.
“Often, students undertaking tasks at home would email the teacher, which can then add to teachers’ workloads to reply to these questions.
“The AI allows students to be guided through tasks, but also provides visibility for teachers, whereas
students just googling information may slip through the cracks of education and information they may be struggling with may become a gap in their learning.”
As an experienced educator trained in the traditional management of students, Lock says there were initial concerns that the AI tool would “be used by students to write their responses, and it would be difficult to authenticate students’ work and ultimately lead to students having little understanding of the topics when being assessed”.
“These concerns were initially addressed by manually authenticating work, as well as intentional professional development in understanding the possibilities of AI and how AI is being used within industry,” he told EducationDaily.
“It soon became clear that by knowing their students, teachers are able to quickly determine who is using AI (and or cutting and pasting information) to authenticate work.”
In his school’s classrooms today, Lock says “we are starting to use Education Perfect for students to consolidate learning online”.
“Students are given questions to answer, and the AI is able to give instant feedback to support students making improvements and developing their understanding. The AI also allows teachers to see how students are developing so they can guide where further development is needed.
“I am also teaching students how to use AI effectively in areas which are not being directly assessed, such as through STEM and engineering classes to develop coding to assist mechanical or electrical systems to be controlled.
“AI is also being utilised through our school’s research facilities (libraries) to assist and teach students how to effectively research and navigate large quantities of information available. The school also embraces an AI chatbot to primarily assist families from non-English speaking backgrounds to access information about the school and school activities.”
But while some educators may see Lock’s embracing of the AI tech as impressive, Smith says that there is still more to come, with regards to ways artificial intelligence could transform education.
What should be built in the future?
“I think we’re currently only scratching the surface of what will be possible in the near future,” he told EducationDaily.
“The industry trend over the last few years is that these models become twice as fast/cheap/accurate roughly every six months. At the same time, educators and ed-tech companies like us have only really been integrating these tools for the last 12 months or so, so even if progress were to stop today there’s a wealth of additional use-cases that we simply haven’t had the time to build and integrate yet.
“That then shifts the focus from the question of “what can be built?” to the question of “what should be built?”, and we’re starting to see a body of evidence accumulate around the ingredients necessary for these experiences to be genuinely helpful for student learning. Ideally, these tools would free teachers up from some of the repetitive, time-consuming administrative style tasks they get swamped with today and allow them to spend more time with their students, in small groups or one on one.”
Smith says there a “robust body of research that shows that timely, personalised, actionable feedback has a significantly positive impact on student learning”.
“Students can have a go at a skill or try to explain a concept in a low-stakes environment with no risk of embarrassment and can immediately receive guidance on how they’ve done and how they can improve.
“They can then circle back and try to implement these suggestions, and they’ll get positive reinforcement when they’re successful.
“This ‘learning loop’ is at the core of any educational experience, and using AI allows us to tighten this loop, speeding up the learning process and supporting students every step of the way.”
