How And Why Teachers Are Using AI Assistants To Save Time (2024)

It’s no secret that artificial intelligence technology has taken the world by storm, infliltrating just but every major industry, and the education sector has been another major benefactor of this innovative technology.

Initially, when AI was introduced to schools, the focus was on students and how the technology would be able to improve their learning experience. In fact, according to a study conducted by Pearson, many teachers expressed little confidence in their own ability to successfully use AI. Simultaneously, however, the study showed that despite teachers’ trepidations, they did and do believe in th potential of AI in the classroom.

Even though teachers were a little slower than students in picking up the tech, recently, innovators in the industry have started pushing forward in creating AI to assist teachers in ways that are effective and easy to use – and it’s working.

This shift has been transformative for the AI industry at large, but most importantly, it’s changed the lives of teachers in particular. Not only does this technology help them save time during their busy schedules, giving them more capacity to focus on other aspects of their work, but it also helps them improve the overall quality and consistency of their output and the influence they have on their students.

Let’s take a look at the different ways in which AI assistants and general AI tech can be used by teachers, as well as the advantages that AI can have for teachers, schools and, at the end of the day, students.

How AI Assistants Can Be Used By Educators

In shifting the focus from how AI can help students to how it can be used constructively by educators, innovators needed to properly understand the difference in objectives of each group. One of the most significant obstacles faced by teachers is a lack of time in light of the immense amount of work they need to do on a daily basis, in addition to engaging with students.

The most important consideration for teachers, therefore, is how to help them do everything they need to do while maintaining a high level of quality and consistency.

In response to this need, here are some ways AI is now being used to assist teachers:

Creating Supplementary Learning Resources

AI teaching assistants can be used to create an array of different supplementary learning resources that can be incredibly helpful in the classroom. This can include things like lesson plans, informative handouts, tests and assignments.

By feeding informtion into the AI software, the virtual assistant will be able to produce resources in accordance with the guidelines and parameters set by the teacher.

That is, a teacher working on creating a history quiz for their students about the American Civil War, for instance, will be able to tell the teaching assistant what they want – including the length of the quiz, the types of questions it ought to include, the level of difficulty of the quiz and more. From there, the software will produce a quiz that meets all these requirements – along with an accurate memo. Quizizz is a great example of this, creating high-quality quizzes for teachers to be used by students – it also boasts additional tools including slideshow generation and more.

Automating Clerical Tasks on a Day-To-Day Basis

One of the main time-wasters, so to speak, that teachers deal with on a daily basis is the signiificant amount of clerical work they have to do. However, basic clerical work and administration is one of the easiest things for AI to handle, and with AI programmes specially designed for use in school systems, educators are able to automate a lot of work that they used to have to do manually, including:

• Grading Papers: By feeding completed tests and exams into the programme, teachers will be able to get fully marked papers back. All they have to do is provide the memo (which may also have been AI generated). Teachers can decide on the depth and complexity that they require in the grading, and whether or not they want analysis of students’ performances.

• Marking Essays and Longer Assignments: More advanced AI programmes are now able to mark longer, more complex assignments, including things like essays about intricate topics. This includes evaluating basic structure, spelling and grammar, as well as the actual content.

• Writing Emails: Teachers can use AI to write emails to parents, colleagues ad students (depending on the age group) by providing simple prompts and details.

• Tracking Attendance: A particularly mundane task that teachers have to do on a regular basis is track attendance and, from time to time, analyse and correlate the data. Now, AI teaching assistants can do this in a matter of seconds.

• Creating Deadline Reminders: AI teaching assistants can help educators set deadline reminders for themselves as well as for their students.

Magic School is one such AI teaching assistant that teachers can utilise to perform these types of tasks, offering a a diverse range of tools, ranging from generating markig rubrics to creating fun and unique lesson plans. It also operates as an organisational tool for busy teachers.

Indeed, the main challenge involved in having to do these things on a daily basis is the amount of time it takes teachers, who are already limited in that sense, and the difficulty of maintaining high quality and consistency.

Not only do these helpful AI teaching assistants make completing these tasks way quicker, but they also remove a lot of potential for human error and introduce a higher level of consistency.

Ideation and Creativity in Lesson Plans

Creativity is a big and important part of being a teacher, but it can be challenging for those who have been teaching for a long time to constantly produce new and exciting lesson plans, especially when they have so much to do.

Now, AI teaching assistants like Lesson Pilot can use artificial intelligence to give them a helping hand in coming up with and enhancing lesson plans. By feeding these programms prompts regarding the purpose of the activity or lesson, as well as guidelines pertaining to the age group of the students, the subject and more, teachers will have access to unique and createive lesson plans that are tailored to both the teacher and the students’ needs.

Data Analysis: Assessing the Performance of the Class and Specific Students

One of the potentially most helpful things educators can do in assisting learners is provide them with personalised feedback specifically tailored to their performance and their needs.

However, the reality of being able to do this is far more challenging than it sounds, because, among other things, it’s incredibly time consuming, and there are only so many hours in the day.

AI teaching assistants are making significant strides in combattig this issue, however, with the ability to assess the performance of students on a personalised level. These programmes can collect data from the class as a whole and analyse it accordingly to advise teachers on learning areas to focus on, as well as areas where students are excelling. They can also provide analysis of individual students’ performances, assessing their strengths and weaknesses, something that, for most busy teachers, is simply far too time consuming.

There are a few AI programmes that have emerged as leaders in this particular area of educational AI, including Pearson’s teaching assistant software.

AI Teaching Assistants as a Complementary Tool for Educators

The idea behind the use of AI in the classroom is to be able to use it as a tool to compliment teachers’ skills, rather than replace them, as many seem fear is on the horizon.

By making use of advanced artificial intelligence technology used by AI teaching assistants, educators working with all age groups – from small children to university students – can save time and improve the quality and consistency of their work while having the luxury of being able focus more on specific students.