Classroom Automation can be Automagical
Have you ever wished your classes could become "auto-magical" so that you and I could focus more on what matters and deliver more value to our students?
Today, we want to discuss key strategies for automating tasks to enhance productivity, freeing up more time to engage with our students, and reducing additional work hours. Research has shown that integrating technology into education can have numerous benefits. "Teachers enjoy what they do but are overburdened by work outside of teaching: 20 to 40% of teacher hours are spent on activities that existing technology could automate, redirecting 13 hours a week to activities that could improve student outcomes and increase teacher satisfaction (Edweb.net, 2023)."
One area to focus on is the learning management system (LMS) platform. LMS platforms include services like Blackboard, D2L Brightspace, Moodle, or Canvas. These platforms streamline administrative tasks, such as enrollment, attendance, grading, and course materials distribution, allowing us to spend more time on actual teaching. Building onto your LMS courses can reduce the time required for administrative demands concerning smaller tasks. For example, you can build assessments such as quizzes or rubrics into your courses, and the grading process can be either partially or fully automated.
Sometimes, you'll need to review submitted work as a double-check, but the effort will largely reduce the time spent grading. You can also structure your courses ahead of time to craft the larger experiential narrative. However, we would be remiss not to mention a few adverse impacts of building a self-sustaining LMS-hosted course. One concern is your work's intellectual property rights, where your ownership rights will likely depend on your institution's policies. Another point of note is the time required to build (and subsequently update) these courses, which is heavy on the front end, so it's advised to pursue this endeavor when you have the time and bandwidth.
AI integration can also be incredibly powerful. AI tools for work integration are a hot area of development. Tools such as Google Scholar, Zapier, Quillbot, and Chat GPT empower students' and faculty's ability to evaluate and create content. By leveraging AI, teachers can automate low-hanging or routine tasks, provide personalized learning experiences, and even identify at-risk students who may need extra help.
These tools can be used to evaluate course content for clarity and ease of understanding, set up rubrics or assignment specifications, and outline essential points for class topics. While this technology is rapidly changing the professional and academic worlds alike, it still comes with drawbacks, including the reliability and accuracy of the information due to the way Language Learning Models (LLMs) work. As far as we know from the original date of this post, LLMs need to verify and source the information they pull, so the onus remains on us to ensure that what is written is real. By embracing automation in LMS platforms and AI integration, educators can free up valuable time, which can be reinvested in creating a more engaging and enriching learning experience.
Sources:
https://home.edweb.net/the-power-of-automation/
https://www.think-learning.com/learning-management-system/lms-automations/
https://www.learningtoteach.co/blog/what-can-teachers-automate
https://zapier.com/blog/automation-for-education/
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