A weekly collection of education-related news from around the web.

“AI Is Uncannily Good At Judging Writing” (When Comparing Works)

“We asked the LLMs to make Comparative Judgements instead. They have to read two pieces of writing and choose which is better, and we can then combine together all of these decisions to create a very sophisticated measurement scale for every piece of writing… This approach is much more effective, and results in very high […]

What Kind Of Feedback Do Students And Teachers Want?

“So far, our teachers have told us that the report they find the most useful is the teacher report, consisting of personalised information on every student designed for teachers. There are three elements in the report: data, AI feedback and the student writing. They prefer this to the student report, which is similar but doesn’t […]

Is The “Flynn Effect” Reversing? How Much? Why?

“For most of the 20th century, scores on IQ tests steadily increased. This trend was termed the Flynn effect, after James Flynn, who described it. But in developed countries, this increase appears to have stopped and even reversed for cohorts born in the latter decades of the 20th century.”

“How Do Students Redraft Their Writing?”

“We provided students with very detailed and personalised feedback reports which featured a mix of AI feedback, teacher feedback and resources designed by us. Here’s a brief summary of what was available – you can read more here.”

AI Is Reliable At Assessing Student Writing

“We now have results. Our headline finding is that AI is very good at judging student writing and is a viable and time-saving alternative for many forms of school assessment. Here are the details… We have been running similar tasks since 2017 for students at primary and secondary, and have assessed nearly 3 million pieces […]

Whole-Class, Individualized, And AI-Driven Writing Feedback

“Suppose you are learning to drive, and during a lesson, your instructor says very little. At the end, he hands you a lengthy and specific written comment… This is all true, but it is not very helpful. And, crucially, even if you doubled it in length or added even more detail, it would still not […]

Issues

Every week I send out articles I encounter from around the web. Subject matter ranges from hard knowledge about teaching to research about creativity and cognitive science to stories from other industries that, by analogy, inform what we do as educators. This breadth helps us see our work in new ways.

Readers include teachers, school leaders, university overseers, conference organizers, think tank workers, startup founders, nonprofit leaders, and people who are simply interested in what’s happening in education. They say it helps them keep tabs on what matters most in the conversation surrounding schools, teaching, learning, and more.

Peter Nilsson

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