Here at Nurture, we are very proud to announce the launch of our new version of the Nurture Assistant, an AI chat which exists in Nurture. Many of our current users may be familiar with the previous version of the Nurture Assistant, which can suggest feedback and student comments in the current feedback process. We have now engineered the new Nurture Assistant, an AI-powered chat feature that reads, analyses, provides specific and accurate feedback, and grades students' digital submissions. Powered by OpenAI and Nurture's curriculum expertise, the Assistant ensures precise feedback and grading aligned with teachers' observations. It complements teacher's work by enhancing feedback delivery, once again making the life and work of the teacher that bit easier.
Moreover, the Nurture Assistant is equipped with safety measures to prioritise student data protection, ensuring no data harvesting occurs and preventing any explicit or inappropriate responses.
We have included a detailed guide on how to use the Nurture Assistant and its benefits. Whether it's analysing digital submissions, teacher-submitted work, physical copies, or images, the Assistant offers versatile support tailored to your preferences and classroom needs.
In this blog, we explore how the new Nurture Assistant can be used by teachers to create even more effective feedback in less time.
Enhanced Time Efficiency with the new Nurture Assistant
Here at Nurture, we are very conscious of the one thing teacher’s lack the most, time, and consistently strive to put more time back in teachers’ pockets. With the Nurture Assistant, teachers can have the Nurture Assistant read, analyse, grade and give feedback on a students’ work in an average of just 2 minutes and 25 seconds! For most teachers, they would struggle to even get the grade calculated in this time.
Teacher voice is very important to us and this is reflected in the Nurture Assistant. When conversing with the Nurture Assistant, the teacher is actively encouraged to give context and input to personalise the Assistant’s responses and make sure its calculations are in line with the teacher’s preferences. Why not use a stopwatch to calculate how long it takes you to complete your grading and feedback on students’ work both with the Nurture Assistant and without?
Guardrails and Safety
One of teachers’ primary concerns in using A.I. in the classroom is the important topic of student and teacher safety, and the potential of user data being harvested.
In a recent survey by the Association of Secondary Teachers in Ireland, almost a third of teachers surveyed already use AI in their planning and preparation work but 80% have concerns about using AI including data harvesting, the potential of AI to undermine professional teacher autonomy and increased teacher workload.
The Nurture Assistant is specifically engineered to protect user data and has safety guardrails in place to prevent inappropriate use. The Nurture Assistant is powered by Open AI, who will not use Nurture’s data for its own AI training purposes, making the Nurture Assistant more private (and your data more secure) in comparison to Chat GPT and other AI platforms. To see further information on Open A.I.’s commitment to privacy, check out their privacy terms for Enterprise here . We have also worked hard to implement safety guardrails designed specifically for education that prevent inappropriate use and are wholly focused on teaching, learning, assessment and feedback.
Moreover, our Nurture Assistant is designed as a tool to further enable our teachers, consistently seeking further context from the teacher who knows their students best. Teachers will always be the expert on their student’s needs and this is reflected in our Assistant. The Assistant is simple to use and does not require any further set-up in Nurture so teachers don’t have to worry about learning a myriad of new skills to use this new technology.
More Accurate Grades and Specific Feedback
The Nurture Assistant combines the power of Open AI, subject curricula and teacher voice to generate more accurate grades and specific feedback.
Using your curriculum boundary, the Nurture Assistant can pull information from past Marking Schemes to inform its grading of student work, meaning your grades are even more accurate. Furthermore, feedback is generated by using the student confidence score and comment to give context and encouragement, the learning outcomes selected for the assessment and teacher input. In under ten seconds, the Nurture Assistant can generate a personal comment of 60-110 words for the student. Writing this on a page for the student could take the teacher up to five minutes and, it would more than likely end up at the bottom of the bag covered in yoghurt! The Nurture Assistant can even be instructed by the teacher to breakdown the student grade according to specific metrics and will justify its calculation of student grades, assuring the teacher even further of its capabilities and, more importantly, its accuracy.
Streamlined Process for Feedback
While the Nurture Assistant is a welcome advancement to our product, one thing remains the same: our commitment to streamlining the feedback process for students. The Nurture Assistant will assist you in generating your personal comment and grade but the process of having students’ reflect on their submission and reflect on their feedback remains the same. In this way, you are using the same process, in less time, to deliver more effective assessments and feedback to your students that is pedagogically sound.
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How to Use the New Nurture Assistant
To assist you in using the Nurture Assistant effectively, we have created a comprehensive instructional document. This resource provides step-by-step instructions and several short videos to guide you through the various scenarios of using the Nurture Assistant, making sure you feel confident and comfortable using this feature for the first time.Check out the following instructions here and have a look at the video below for a taster on how to use this exciting new tool.
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