The concrete benefits of artificial intelligence (AI) in education are slow to be felt in Canada. While applications using AI do exist, few have any real impact in the classroom. In this article, we introduce you to JoeZoo, which promises to make that difference by relieving teachers of the heavy, repetitive task of marking while providing the student with quick feedback. Too good to be true?
Annoyed to see their teacher friend spending his evenings correcting, two American entrepreneurs wondered how AI could help him, reports This article from the Globe and Mail. They then imagined and designed a brand new digital solution: Joezoo, a learning management system for the field of languages.
Integration with Google
Like many systems of its kind, the digital tool makes it possible to assign work to the student, to give him feedback and to provide him with an evaluation on the progress of his skills. The particularity of JoeZoo lies in its integration into the Google Education suite, in the form of an extension. When a student writes a text, the extension becomes an accomplice in its writing.
The application's AI identifies student difficulties in vocabulary, grammar and text structure. This allows them to provide feedback tailored to the student's progress, distribute badges to encourage their success and even detect plagiarism!
Personalized diagnosis
During this time, the teachers collect in a dashboard the necessary information allowing them to evaluate and make a judgment on the progress of their pupils. This makes it easier for them to pinpoint their difficulties and suggest activities to support those who are experiencing difficulties.
The AI is here at the service of the teacher by relieving him of 50 to 80 % of the correction time, according to application designers. In addition, by providing more responsive, regular and faster feedback - often in real time - the app makes learning much easier.
Over 13,000 educational institutions in North America already use JoeZoo. Very present in American and Asian schools, the digital application is still slow to take root in Canada. Note also that it is only available in English for the moment.
Meanwhile, JoeZoo's AI continues to improve. Its developers are now selling it as a white label extension for integration with other learning software that mobilizes writing skills.
What started out as a simple idea to lend a hand to a friend has become a learning and assessment support tool for thousands of students and teachers.
AI for learning
According to a report of the Higher Education Council, published in 2020, “there are […] currently many applications that could improve learning. The main challenges are to find these applications and to assess their pedagogical relevance, to review the design of courses and activities accordingly, to rethink the evaluation of learning and to develop appropriate pedagogical scenarios ”.
Thus, the AI will not only remove the piles of student copies that pile up on the corner of the desk at the end of the stage. It should bring about a profound change in the teaching profession.
To go further, consult our file Artificial intelligence in education.
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