Teachers are expected to undertake open-ended formative assessment activities to support and inform teaching, learning and assessment. The burden of work in this area is high and any means of reducing workloads will be beneficial to both teachers and learners.
Bolton College previously had proven the concept of using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to analyse short and long form answers and to demonstrate that real-time feedback can be offered to vocational learners as they respond to online open-ended formative assessment tasks. Their FirstPass tool provided an initial introduction to AI cloud computing technologies which are able to support vocational students and their teachers with open-ended formative assessment tasks.
This project will provide further development of FirstPass to ensure that it is effective and robust in use and can demonstrably improve the teaching, learning and assessment experience of vocational learners. It will provide teachers with a richer medium for assessing students due to its ability to pose open-ended questions that can be automatically analysed and assessed by a computer, giving students real-time feedback and the opportunity to qualify and clarify their responses. The revised AI Cloud FirstPass tool will be suitable for use by vocational students and teachers in multiple institutions.