Much like with a math quiz, we want to provide students an opportunity to see areas of improvement in real time and to have the opportunity to self assess those areas against a rubric, make improvements, and test again for a quick feedback loop. Called our AI Rubric Coach, this feature is the first of ours to read student content. Check out the summary below or re-watch the webinar here.
Our Goal: Tighten the Feedback Loop
- Help students get instant, intentionally non-specific, feedback on areas for improvement to encourage self assessment of their work based on a rubric provided by the instructor.
- Teach students to understand rubrics and how to self assess against a rubric
- Save instructors time by handling the 1st line of feedback for students to make their work as good as it can be by final submission.
In addition to a rubric coach feature that tightens the feedback loop, we want students to keep reflecting on their work throughout the process up until submission, deepening their engagement with the material.
Step 1: Rubric Generation in Harmonize
As a first step, we have to create a rubric. You simply type the assignment instructions and expectations you have for students, and in just one click, ChatGPT in Harmonize will read those instructions and pull out the top four focus areas for what student success looks like on this assignment.
You can then use those focus areas as is or add to or edit them, and then choose to surface those focus areas to students before they begin the assignment. Research shows that providing students with success criteria before they perform an assignment significantly improves their performance. Plus, the use of success criteria during formative assessment has been linked to increased academic confidence, a stronger sense of belonging, and a better mastery of skills. Now, what if you take that a step further and turn those focus areas into a gradable rubric.
When you generate a full rubric from those focus areas, you not only present students with a complete view of your intentions behind this assignment, you also provide a path to growth and success on this assignment. A rubric for assessment with full descriptions for each level of each criteria along with the focus is not presented front and center for each student, setting them up for success and setting instructors up for easier assessment.
While we build the rubric for you, you get to make sure it’s exactly what you want with opportunities to tailor it. This creates an easy path to getting a for your assignment. Because these rubrics are customized to the activity, we’re able to more successfully coach students against it. However, if you are using Canvas and you’ve assigned a rubric that was built outside the system, we are not yet going to allow coaching with that.
For more on rubric generation in Harmonize
Step 2: AI to Coach Students
When a student begins working on a written assignment, they’ll have an opportunity to pass it through our AI integration to scan and assess the student’s work against the rubric you generated. That said, it’s optional for students to use the coach.
Once that scan happens, we’re going to show the rubric with a detail on how much improvement is possible on certain criteria from the rubric. The goal is to prompt the student to think about the material they’ve written, while the instructor still provides a full assessment and feedback. We just want that full assessment to be on the best possible version of the student’s work.
In addition, the AI rubric coach provides a level of personalized learning for each student, with ongoing feedback for improvement and praise which can work to motivate better student performance and keep the student engaged with course material.
That said, not all work can be scanned by AI. For example, if it’s a pronunciation assignment in a foreign language class and students are loading videos of themselves speaking, the feature labels those assignments as ‘human assessment needed’. The instructor can also mark assignments as ‘human assessment needed.’
Step 3: Submit for Instructor Assessment
What the feature won’t do is grading. It’s not going to fill out the rubric or assign points.
Once an assignment is submitted to the instructor for review, the instructor will be able to see all the previous versions of the student’s work. Here, you’re able to see the student’s growth journey through the assignment so you have a fuller picture of the student’s performance on that assignment.
If you choose to enable auto-grading and use the AI rubric coach, we generate a rubric without points associated with a specific criteria — allowing students to still see the rubric to guide their work, without seeing any criteria points. This eliminates any student confusion and allows you to use both features from the same assignment.
While the feature is intended to expedite formative feedback for students, it’s also an optional feature for instructors who wish to do their own formative feedback. If you don’t want the student to be coached on a rubric, you can still generate a rubric and just not enable the coaching mechanism. The big concern is whether AI can give feedback that really duplicates human grading. Imagine a scenario where AI rated the work as great, while the human grader for the final draft using the same rubric has different ideas. At the end of the day, the instructor has the final word because they are the human in charge of this class.
The rubric coach will be available for piloting by mid summer 2024 so stay tuned! If you’re interested in seeing how AI in Harmonize can help you improve student outcomes, let’s talk.
