AI for marking and feedback

The UK National Centre for AI, hosted through Jisc has announced the third in a series of pilot activities for AI in education. The pilot project being undertaken in partnership with Graide, an EdTech company who have built an AI-based feedback and assessment tool, es designed to help understand how universities could benefit from using AI to support the marking and feedback process.

Sue Attewell says:

AI-based marking and feedback tools promise the joint benefits of reducing educators’ workloads, whilst improving the quality, quantity, timeliness and/or consistency of feedback received by students.

After a positive initial assessment of Graide, we are launching this pilot to find out how Jisc’s members could benefit from this solution.

Universities in the UK have been invited to take part in the pilot in which following an initial webinar and interviews will a small number of participants will use Graide in practice, with an evaluation their experience. Stage two of the pilot will focus on exploring the platform’s functionality; in stage three, the platform will be used ‘live’ with at least one cohort of students.

Despite increasing interest in the potential of AI especially for providing automated feedback to students there remain limitations. It is notable that the pilot is focused on STEM and the UK National Centre for AI says that “The most appropriate types of assignments will be those where there is a definitive correct answer and where feedback would also be expected on the working out.”

Artificial Intelligence and Educational Inclusion

On May 6, Graham Attwell and Angela Karadog from Pontydysgu, together with our colleague George Bekiaridis from ACP in Athens, are taking part in a panel session at the CIISE International Congress on Social and Educational Inclusion at The University of the Basque Country in Bilbao, Spain.

The panel is being organised through the AI@School project, funded by the EU Erasmus+ programme with the theme of Artificial Intelligence and Educational Inclusion. UNESCO are promoting the use of AI in education, seeing it as a key technology for attaining the UN Sustainable Development Goals in making education available to all young people. Yet there remain persistent concerns over the ethics of AI and the growing commercialisation of education through educational technology.

The panel session will be streamed and you are all welcome to attend. But even more, please ask the panel your questions around inclusion and AI. We will be taking questions on the day. But we are also gathering questions in advance on a Google page. Just add your questions to the list. Ad if you would like us to name check you, add your name and where you are from.

Industry 4.0 and Vocational Education and Training

The Taccle AI and VET project has been working with the BBS 2 vocational school in Wolfsburg, Germany. The school has close links with industry, particularly Volkswagen who have a major manufacturing plant in Wolfsburg. They are developing a series of projects around Industry 4.0 which is largely based on digitalisation, data and the use of Artificial Intelligence. The school has recently produced a video in English (see bottom of page on the Foraus website) entitled Smart factory - Industry 4.0 in Vocational Education and Training. They say:

Teaching the complex interrelationships of Industry 4.0 in vocational training places new demands on training staff and makes modern teaching concepts necessary. At BBS 2 - the „Vocational School 2" - in Wolfsburg, this has led to a conceptual change in the vocational training of automation and mechatronics technicians.

In this deductive approach (from general to specific), the training begins with a digital overall system that serves as a model for professional action. System interrelationships, structure, modes of operation, malfunctions and problem solutions can be taught, learned and discovered using the model of a smart factory as an example. Based on this, the individual components and subsystems can then be understood and comprehended within the overall system.

In the classroom, the complex technologies and processes of Industry 4.0 become tangible in the truest sense of the word. Here, trainees for automation technology and dual students have developed and built a compact smart factory filling system themselves. It works with the same technical components as a production plant in industry.
To support the young people's independent learning, the trainees have developed a learning platform, which also serves the cooperation between training, school, production and industry partners.