As discussed by Spencer (2023) it is crucial for evaluation to remain human even as AI is used as a time-saving tool for teachers. The connection between student and teacher that is facilitated by their emotional reactions to work is crucial to education (Spencer, 2023)and AI like this that can stand in as the teacher in grading must be used with caution. To overuse it would be to lose some of the connections that can be built between students and teachers. González-Calatayud et al. (2021) mention a similar train of thinking, stating that:

Research so far shows that a machine cannot assume the role of a teacher, and the way artificial intelligence works and carries out processes in the context of teaching is far from human intelligence… partly due to the lack of transparency in decision-making algorithms. (p. 12)

This applies to Enlighten AI as well. They claim that the AI learns how a teacher grades and bases the grades it gives on its own off of that information, and offers comments to explain their marks and feedback to the students, but there is a lack of transparency in the site as to how this is happening.

They have a clear and relatively easy-to-understand privacy policy that outlines how information is collected through their program. They do not collect any student information which is very important in terms of AI used in schools, however, it does require fairly extensive access to the teacher’s Google account and further computer history and use information. With this large access to information required for use, I question if it would be possible for a school division to ever widely implement such a program, as it would then be requiring all teachers to share this information regardless of their level of comfort with it. The site does outline how it will use this personal data in a way that is clear, and understandable and doesn’t involve selling it so it appears to be careful with its use of teachers’ data. It has a detailed full description of its privacy policy and information use that only raised one real concern to me. They use Open AI as the source of their AI in the program, meaning specific data in the program is shared with Open AI and is subject to their privacy policy as well. This leads to the issue of Open AI’s privacy policy and how it compares to Enlighten AI’s.

Affordances:

It is approachable and fairly simple to figure out for beginners to use AI. The website is easy to navigate and does not require any prior knowledge about AI to use, making it great for teachers who are new to using AI.

The tool connects directly to Google Classroom, making it simple and easy to set up for all teachers who already use Google Classroom. The classes already set up in Google Classroom will be uploaded to the site and automatically show all assignments and student work in the grading platform. It updates alongside Google Classroom so teachers do not need to worry about uploading assignments in multiple places or keeping track of things across two platforms.

Enlighten AI is completely free to use. This makes it considerably more accessible for teachers as paying out of pocket for a timesaving tool is not a reasonable expectation for teachers.

The use of the tool for personalized marking by AI is very useful, by using data from how a few assignments are marked the AI can accurately mark further assignments in the style that the teacher would. This feature is unique as most AI marking systems are much less personalized in how they grade.

Constraints:

The personalization available does add more work for the teacher. They will need to grade one or a few assignments on their own for the AI to do the rest accurately, while other models require less guidance.

The creators of Enlighten AI have indicated that they wish to open to other platforms in the future, but currently, if your classroom is not run through Google Classroom it is not an option for you.

It requires assignments to be in Google Doc format in order to be graded, this shouldn’t be a major issue if the students are already using Google Classroom, however, it is a constraint to keep in mind that may affect the types of assignments teachers would want to assign.

The function of the tool to input curriculum is less sophisticated than some other models, which means that it would be less useful for bigger projects with complex or extensive rubrics. The models that do have more complex rubric capabilities from what I could find, however, were not free or allowed very limited free access making them less helpful to teachers. This shows that there is a need for resources that fulfill all of these needs that are not currently available.

The Process/ A Step by Step How to