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Chatting about chatbots: How AI tools can support teachers

Chatting about chatbots: How AI tools can support teachers

On this episode of School’s In Stanford GSE Assistant Professor Dora Demszky discusses how chatbots can be used to give teachers feedback.

While much has been said about the potential positive and negative effects of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in education as it relates to students, less has been said about how AI tools can be used to support teachers.

Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE) Assistant Professor Dora Demszky, whose research combines machine learning, natural language processing, linguistics, and input from educators, is currently working on a project called M-Powering Teachers that  provides feedback for teachers in the classroom.

“It’s really rooted in the idea that we want to empower teachers,” said Demszky, who teached education data science at the GSE. “We’re not trying to tell them what to do. We’re just providing them with opportunities to reflect on what they did.”

The M-Power tool (the m stands for machine) utilizes natural language processing to analyze verbal classroom interactions and provides formative feedback to teachers.

“A lot of the feedback is actually more just providing them with things that they did, highlighting things and moments in their lesson for them to reflect on and asking them good reflection questions and goal-setting questions so there’s less opportunity for risks or for error,” she said.

Demzsky joins hosts GSE Dean Dan Schwartz and Senior Lecturer Denise Pope on School’s In as they discuss artificial intelligence as a tool for positive feedback and support for educators. Her research focuses on developing natural language processing methods to support equitable and student-centered instruction.

In the episode she explains how  her team is trying to identify practices like cultivating growth mindset, using supportive language, and building on student ideas as focal points for teacher feedback and professional learning. 

“We know from the literature — like, decades of literature — that when students feel heard, when they feel that their ideas matter and that their teachers are building on it rather than just funneling them to a very specific answer, that really facilitates learning,” says Demszky. “So we identify practices that are related to that, like building on ideas, mindset-supportive talk, asking questions that probe students’ thinking, and then we build algorithms.”

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Faculty mentioned in this article: Dan Schwartz, Denise Pope, Dora Demszky

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