The discourse around generative AI in education has – thus far – been overwhelmingly weighted towards how it’s impacting students.

Earlier this year, a Sunday Post report based on an FOI request found that more than 400 students at universities across Scotland have been caught using artificial intelligence to cheat in the last two years.

While it could be universally agreed that students shouldn’t use generative AI to answer questions for them, it’s hardly the end of potential applications of the technology in education.

There’s a very strong case that we’re looking at AI’s application in education through the wrong lens.

Statistics from 2023 show that class overcrowding and teacher overwork in Scotland remained major concerns.

The overall number of teachers decreased for the first time in five years, dropping by 92 full-time equivalent (FTE) positions, despite a rise in pupil numbers.

This issue has been particularly acute in primary schools, where increasing student enrolment has exacerbated the strain on staff. 

The average class size in primary schools in Scotland currently stands at 23.2 students​ – though, it’s worth noting that this number swells considerably across the Central Belt of Scotland.

The situation is made more complex by a growing number of pupils with additional support needs – a media statement released by the Education Institute of Scotland earlier this year stated that ‘Additional Support Needs (ASN) in our schools at an all-time high’.

Teacher unions, such as the aforementioned Educational Institute of Scotland, have raised alarms about the impact on teacher workloads and education quality. Moreover, industrial actions are ongoing, as teachers self-advocate for better pay and working conditions​.

This is a problem that won’t be resolved unless – something is done to ease the burden on teachers.

With that in mind, we spoke to Katie Hasselstrøm, founder and CEO of AI-powered teaching tool, Teacherbot, to discuss the problems facing teachers and how a good faith approach to AI tools could significantly ease the burden on our strained educators.

The Current Problems of Modern-day Teaching

While teachers should clearly be expected to have a grasp and understanding of the materials they’re teaching, the logistics of crafting compelling materials to ensure students get the most out of their lessons goes far beyond this.

As well as teaching to ever-swelling classroom sizes, “within that, there is a huge range of ability levels,” says Hasselstrøm.

“For example, in one literacy lesson, they could be teaching three different novels to accommodate ability levels, so that’s three different sets of comprehension questions, three different follow-up tasks,” she adds.

“You’ve also got a lot of children with additional support needs as well – teachers have to create additional support plans for those children, which takes a huge amount of time.”

Hasselstrøm speaks from experience, having held teaching roles not only here in Scotland, but also in Australia and Denmark across a 10-year career.

It’s through this wide-ranging berth in education that Hasselstrøm became acutely cognisant of the commonalities in teaching. Or, more specifically, the globally extrapolatable roadblocks teachers face.

“We all have the same problems,” she said. “Teachers have to put a huge amount of planning time into their classes in order to make sure they’re structured well.”

Fast forward to the release of ChatGPT in November 2022, and Hasselstrøm almost instantly recognised its potential in streamlining the kinds of tasks that are bottle-necking teachers.

On this, she recounted: “I was looking at my novel notes and how I could enhance literature lessons. How could I lessen my workload within that area? Particularly lesson planning around developing critical thinking.”

The initial base tools that Hasselstrøm developed were an instant hit among colleagues and teacher friends, giving her the onus to further develop the offering into what is now Teacherbot.

What Does Teacherbot Do, Exactly?

Why is this kind of AI application exciting with regards to delivering more positive educational outcomes for kids while improving well-being for teachers?

For Hasselstrøm, it started at home.

“I started off with the Scottish curriculum – picking out strands from the curriculum and then making lesson plans, critical thinking questions and assessment strategies.”

It’s from this that Teacherbot’s lesson planning tool was born. With this, it’s from this that Teacherbot’s lesson planning tool was born. 

With this AI-powered system, teachers can create editable lesson plans, series plans, and forward plans based on a variety of curricular areas. Within these plans, suggested higher-order thinking questions, theory-based teaching techniques, and assessment strategies are automatically generated.

All of these elements are aligned with Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence, experiences, and outcomes. The tool considers different learning abilities, helping teachers efficiently prepare for diverse classroom needs while incorporating sound pedagogical practices.

Another functionality of Teacherbot allows users to take photos of a specific page from a novel, which the tool can then identify specific words by difficulty and present them in a way that develops comprehension across multiple ability levels – without the teacher having to pour over and manually organise every word on every page by difficulty.

On this, Hasselstrøm says: “If I’m teaching chapter 1 of Charlotte’s Web, I could take a picture of one of the pages and say, ‘can you pick out the tricky words?’ It would then create a worksheet for the children.”

With over 18,000 teachers worldwide already using Teacherbot, there’s clearly a huge appetite for streamlining teaching tools – and Hasselstrøm has plenty more in the pipeline.

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She says: “We’ve just launched our Image Magician tool. We’ve worked with Freepik to create an integrated API.

“It can be used to help children make their thinking visible, which can be a very effective teaching strategy.

“One use case would be the exploration of historical events. For example, if you’re learning about World War 2, you can create an image on Teacherbot using Freepik API and it can bring up a picture of the trenches in real-time.”

As AI continues to evolve and proliferate, its role in education should extend beyond students to support our overburdened teachers.

Tools like Teacherbot, then, offer a promising glimpse into a future where technology helps educators reclaim their time, improve classroom engagement, and ultimately deliver more personalised, engaging learning experiences.