Back in 2023, when AI began to gain traction among the general public, teachers declared war on it, as students were using this revolutionary new technology to write papers and cheat on assignments. Fast forward 3 years, and the tables have turned. Now, teachers have a plethora of AI tools at their disposal to assist them in educating the younger generations.
The latest AI tool for teachers comes from Google, which has rolled out a new feature in Google Classroom that helps teachers generate personalized feedback on student-written assignments. The AI-suggested feedback tool is powered by Google’s AI assistant, Gemini, and is a part of Google’s latest push to increase the presence of AI in classrooms.
Teachers can now use this tool to generate feedback on assignments based on students" grade levels and other details. Once in the private comments section of an assignment, the teacher clicks "Help me write," sets a target grade level, and optionally adds a focus area (like grammar or argument strength). Gemini then analyzes the student"s submission and generates drafts of improvement suggestions that teachers can post for students to see.
It’s important to note that this isn’t an automatic grader. The AI assistant is only giving feedback, but the teacher still remains in control. However, knowing how AI tools always have to produce the output, regardless of the input quality, teachers will have to tread carefully when using this tool, or they may end up giving unrealistic feedback to students and ultimately add more work for themselves by cleaning messy suggestions.
The feature is available immediately in Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains with a gradual rollout over the next 15 days. It’s only available to English-speaking educators aged 18 and over for now, which ensures students don’t have access to it. Although the core Google Classroom service is free, the AI-suggested feedback feature is only available to Google Workspace for Education Plus subscribers and those with the Teaching and Learning add-on.
It will be interesting to see how this feature holds up in real-life scenarios with assignments from real students. Especially if some of those assignments are AI-generated or assisted. Will one AI favor the output of another AI, or has Google fine-tuned it in the opposite direction? Also, we have yet to see the initial reaction from parents when they find out their teachers are grading their kids with the help of AI.
You can find more details about the new AI-suggested feedback feature on Google"s Workspace Blog.