2 Ways Teachers Use Technology to Help Themselves and Students
Teachers are heroes. They selflessly go above and beyond to inspire us, to show us the way forward, and to help us understand. They are some of the most impactful people in our lives and their influence extends far beyond the classroom. Oftentimes, though, they are asked to do too much with too little, which can impact their lives within and outside the classroom. To solve for this, teachers are turning to technology to make the most of their time and support students to an even greater degree. With this in mind, let’s look at two ways educators are using technology to help themselves and those they have dedicated their lives to teaching.
1. Leveraging Technology and AI to Grade Coursework
Grading coursework can be a tedious, time consuming task for teachers. It can also result in students being confused by the grades they receive or not fully understanding how they can improve. This is where a technology like Gradescope enters the picture. Gradescope empowers teachers to efficiently and effectively grade paper-based, digital, and code-based coursework using a robust online platform that is built by teachers and backed by artificial intelligence (AI).
Teachers first create grading rubrics for their homework, projects, and exams using Gradescope’s flexible rubric tools. Teachers can construct new rubrics or upload rubrics they have already created or used in the past. These rubrics contain standard information such as how many points each part of a question is worth, but they can also include helpful feedback or teaching information that is automatically shown to a student depending on what question or part of a question they answer incorrectly.
Once a rubric is ready, teachers can then use it to quickly apply point totals, feedback, and other information to work their students have submitted. These rubrics also provide flexibility to teachers and can be updated in real time as needed. If a teacher makes adjustments to the point value of a question or the feedback displayed when a question is answered incorrectly, this update is automatically applied to all previously graded work. For some question types, Gradescope’s AI assistant also offers to automatically group similar answers for teachers so they can review and grade them together. Once grading is complete, teachers can return graded assignments with a single click. Gradescope also allows teachers to handle regrade requests through their online platform, thus allowing teachers to streamline a process that can often be burdensome.
In addition to empowering teachers to simultaneously save time and apply a consistent grading scheme with detailed feedback, Gradescope also provides teachers with tools, insights, and analytics to identify what is going well and what can be improved. This means teachers can understand how well specific concepts are being comprehended by students, and also how well questions, assignments, and exams are working to test their student’s knowledge. This detailed information allows teachers to understand where they might want to adjust their teaching, and also how they might want to alter questions, assignments, or exams they use to evaluate students.
While Gradescope’s platform may not be a perfect fit for every scenario, it is a strong example of the ways in which teachers utilize technology and AI to assist with grading coursework. Given that Gradescope is used by 13,000+ teachers across 500+ universities, and that it has been used to grade over 60,000,000 questions, it is also clear that many teachers have found value in what Gradescope provides and see it as a powerful way to efficiently grade assignments while providing valuable feedback to students.
2. Providing Effective Feedback via Voice and Video
Research has shown that on average humans speak 75% faster than they type. Speaking also allows us to express a far greater range of emotion. Why then are teachers rarely empowered to use voice or video to give feedback on homework, papers, and other assignments? Online platforms like Kaizena allow teachers to do exactly that by providing teachers with tools and resources to easily share voice and video comments with their students. These tools can be used to provide specific feedback connected to highlighted areas, or to provide broad feedback connected to an entire assignment. Such tools have enabled teachers to decrease their grading time by as much as 40% while also allowing them to feel like they are providing more helpful, supportive feedback because it is communicated via audio and video as opposed to text. Research has also shown the efficacy of such feedback, as studies revealed that Kaizena enhances teachers’ relationships with their students and that the vast majority of students prefer verbal feedback compared to written comments.
If teachers feel like they are repeatedly communicating the same feedback to multiple students, Kaizena provides teachers with tools and resources to create explainer and lesson videos to support their students. These videos can also be saved and edited so teachers can reuse them in the future or share them with other educators. Additionally, teachers have the option to allow students to use audio and video comments to provide feedback to fellow students, which can make giving peer-to-peer feedback more efficient and less daunting as students are able to hear the emotion and care that comes with a constructive comment.
While there is still so much to be done to ensure teachers have the resources they deserve, the platforms above provide a promising glimpse of the ways in which technology can be used to support them. Teachers deserve to have the very best technology at their disposal, and these examples should inspire entrepreneurs to think about how they can build solutions to support our heroes. The number of applications in which technology can be used to support teachers is limitless, and it will be exciting to see how these technologies are used in the years ahead to improve the lives of teachers and students around the world.
