Using Artificial Intelligence to Enhance Educator Feedback
Teachers need feedback on their classroom teaching practice to keep students engaged and to grow professionally. Common feedback approaches have often centered on using classroom observation and peer-to-peer coaching. Although these approaches remain powerful professional development tools, new Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enabled tools are making it easier—and more cost effective—for teachers to get fast, actionable feedback.
AIR represents the cutting edge of research and development. Urban Assembly is proud to partner with AIR to bring innovation in education to schools across the country.
- David Adams, Urban Assembly
One AI-enabled platform, known as the Classroom Automated Feedback Environment (or CAFE) is currently being piloted in schools across the country. CAFE uses Generative AI (GenAI) to analyze classroom videos and give teachers helpful data on their instruction practices. The goal is not to evaluate teacher performance, but to provide teachers with metrics to facilitate feedback in core areas and specific teaching domains.
Led by AIR and Urban Assembly, the Project CAFE Team:
- Tracks metrics that provide actionable insights into the classroom environment. The system currently provides metrics related to classroom management, student engagement, and classroom climate, with more in development.
- Ensures the privacy of both teachers and students, as the platform does not send data outside of the system. Only the teacher, and anyone they choose to share it with, can see their data.
- Leads development and maintenance of the CAFE platform, a place where teachers can log in to view their classroom data with clear visuals and short video clips to help them better understand and examine their unique teaching practices.
As CAFE extends its reach into more classrooms, and as more and more teachers take advantage of tools that help them grow, more students will benefit from these AI-enabled tools.
