An arch of balloons surrounded the stage as Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Alberto Carvalho delivered a speech last month praising the pioneering use of artificial intelligence in education. It’s a chatbot (an animated talking sun) called “Ed,” which he described as “our country’s first AI-powered learning acceleration platform.”
More than 26 members of the local and national media attended the splashy announcement (Carvalho pointed out the details in his remarks), and the event included costumes featuring the same long-popular, luminous animated character “Ed.” A person wearing one also appeared. Participants were able to take selfies with the school district mascot.
While many publications have written about the announcement at the nation’s second-largest public school system, details about what the $6 million system will actually do are thin. A press release from the LA Public School District says Ed “provides individualized action plans for each student,” and at one point Carvalho described the system as a “personal assistant.”
But Carvalho and other project officials are also at pains to point out that AI chatbots will not replace human teachers and counselors, or even school districts’ existing learning management systems.
“Ed is irreplaceable,” Carvalho said at a news conference. Presentation on the main stage At the ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego this month. “It’s an enhancement. It actually creates more opportunities, freeing teachers and counselors from bureaucracy and allowing them to do the social, interactive work that builds on the promise of public education.”
So what exactly does this system do?
EdSurge recently tried to find out by demoing the tool, which was custom-made for the district by Boston-based AI company AllHere, with the developers. We also spoke with edtech experts to better understand how this new tool compares to other approaches to using AI in education.
new technology layer
In a sense, the AI system recognizes that the hundreds of ed-tech tools the district has purchased are not well integrated with each other and that students are not using many of the features of those tools. Become.
Like many schools these days, students spend much of their learning time on laptops and iPads, using a variety of technology tools during class. In fact, students may use different online systems for different coursework on their schedule and log into other systems to check their grades and access supplemental resources that can help with things like social work and college planning. .
Therefore, LAUSD’s AI chatbot will serve as a new layer on top of other systems the district already pays for, allowing students and parents to ask questions and use data obtained from a number of existing tools. So that you can get answers.
“School systems often purchase a lot of tools that are underutilized,” AllHere CEO Joanna Smith-Griffin told EdSurge. “Typically, these tools can only be accessed as separate entities, requiring students to have a different login for each tool,” she added. “Ed’s first job was to figure out how to create one unified learning space that would bring all the digital tools together and eliminate the large number of clicks that students would need to interact with all the tools. I was wondering if I should create one.”
Smith-Griffin said the chatbot also helps students and parents who don’t speak English as their first language by translating the information it displays into about 100 different languages.
But the system doesn’t just sit around waiting for students and parents to ask questions. Ed’s main goal is to encourage and motivate students to complete homework and other optional enrichment items. This is what system leaders are referring to when they say they can “accelerate” learning.
For example, in the EdSurge demo, Toby Jackson, chief technology officer at AllHere, showed a sample Ed dashboard screen for a mock account for a student named “Alberto.” When a student logs in, an animation of Ed’s mascot appears, telling a corny joke and informing the student that he has three recommended activities.
After the student completed the first task, Ed said, “Okay, let’s continue.” “And remember, if you stop swimming in the ocean, you’ll sink. Now, why you’re swimming in the middle of the ocean, I don’t know. But the point is, now is not the time to stop. That means no.”
The assignments that Ed presents are taken from the learning management system and other tools used by the school, and Ed identifies assignments that Alberto should submit the next day and other optional exercises that are appropriate for his lesson. I know there are.
When a student clicks on an activity, it appears in a window that automatically opens. For example, her IXL math assignments, an online system used in many schools.
Smith-Griffin said she hopes that Talking Sunburst, known as Ed, will be relatable to students and that the experience “will be fun.” The designers tried to borrow a metaphor from video games, with the demo featuring Ed enthusiastically saying, “Alberto, I achieved my goal today,” and a list of links including links like “Read the book” and “Get it.” We’ve shown you even more resources that you can do. and the designer uses his two different versions of Ed’s digital voice, depending on the student’s grade level. A higher pitched, cartoonish voice for younger students, and a slightly more serious voice for middle school and high school students. .
“We want to encourage daily use,” says Smith-Griffin. “The kids are excited to improve their records and earn their stars.”
And she added that the idea is to use algorithms to individually recommend things to each student that will help them learn. This is how Netflix recommends movies to you based on what you’ve seen in the past.
customer service?
Of course, most teachers already struggle to make it clear to students what assignments are due, and many teachers, especially those in lower grades, send out newsletters to parents. Many artificial strategies are employed. Additionally, learning management systems like Schoology and Seesaw already provide students and parents with an at-a-glance view of deadlines.
The question is whether chatbot interfaces that can be drawn from a variety of systems will change the use of school resources.
“It’s basically customer service,” says Rob Nelson, executive director of academic technology and planning at the University of Pennsylvania, who writes a newsletter on generative AI and writing.
He called the strategy “risky” and noted that previous attempts at chatbots for tech support had mixed results. “This feels like the beginning of a Clippy-level disaster,” he said. I wrote recently, refers to the animated paper clips that Microsoft has used in its products since the late 1990s, which some users found annoying or distracting. “People don’t want personality; they just want information,” he added.
“My first thought was, why do we need a chatbot for that?” Nelson said in an interview with EdSurge. “It appears to be displaying links and information that can already be found when you log in.”
He said this while watching a video recording of Chatbot Ed’s launch event. “It was very glamorous and atmospheric, and I felt like there was a lot of superficial fuss.”
His main question for school districts is: What metrics are they using to measure whether Ed is worth the investment? “If more people can access information because of Ed, that’s probably a win,” he added.
LAUSD officials declined interview requests from EdSurge for this article, but when asked how they plan to measure success, officials sent the following statement: We will continue to evaluate the data and define those KPIs as we learn more. ”
Installation of guardrails
LAUSD leaders and Ed designers emphasize that they have put guardrails in place to avoid the potential pitfalls of generative AI chatbots. As it turns out, this technology is prone to so-called “hallucinations,” where chatbots sometimes present information that sounds true, but is either fabricated or false.
“Bots are not as open as people think,” says Allhere’s Jackson. “We run it through filters,” he added, noting that chatbots are designed to avoid “harm.”
However, the task may not be easy.
“These models are not very good at keeping up with modern slang,” he admitted. “So if we have doubts about an interaction, we involve humans to make that decision.” He said moderators monitor the software, and if an interaction needs to be reviewed immediately, It is said that you can check the dashboard coded in red. “Even if it’s green, we’ll consider it,” he said.
So far, the system has been rolled out in a soft launch to about 55,000 students in 100 schools in the district, and officials said they have not received any reports of chatbot abuse.
Born out of a project at Harvard University’s School of Education in 2016, AllHere leaders say that in some cases, students and parents feel more comfortable asking a chatbot difficult or personal questions than a human teacher or counselor. He said he had discovered something that could be done. And if someone, for example, confides in Ed that they are food insecure, he may be able to connect them with the appropriate school officials and provide resources.
new category
The idea of chatbots like Ed is not entirely new. Some universities have been experimenting with chatbot interfaces for several years to help students navigate various resources on campus.
The challenge when using this approach in a K-12 environment is making sure that all the data provided to students by the chatbot is up-to-date and accurate, says vice president of education market research firm ListEdTech. said James Wiley, President. If your chatbot recommends that a student perform a certain task or see a certain resource, you can ensure that the recommendation is not based on an incomplete student profile. important, he added.
Chatbots are also black boxes as far as knowing what text to generate next, so “if you have AI in there, you might not see any errors,” he added. [in the data] Because the layer is opaque. ”
He said school district officials need to develop some kind of “governance model” to evaluate and check the data in the system.
“If you get it wrong here, the stakes are pretty high,” he says.
It remains to be seen whether this type of system will become widespread at other schools and universities. One of the challenges, Wiley said, is that many institutions don’t have someone in charge of the student and parent experience. So it’s not always clear whether technology people will lead the effort or, in the case of universities, who will lead the admissions process.
At the end of the day, Wiley says it’s hard to explain the Ed chatbot in simple terms (he chose to say it’s “a layer of engagement and personalization between the system and the student”) .
Done right, he says, “it can be more than just a gimmick,” he says, for drivers trying to find the best route on the road, only when passing through a school or university. You can create tools that accomplish what Waze accomplishes.
