Augmented Teaching
Empowering Teaching Practice with Artificial Intelligence and Best Pedagogical Practices
Teaching practice requires more than subject matter knowledge; it demands planning, assessment, and classroom management skills that can consume a great deal of teachers' time and effort. Augmented Teaching responds to this need by providing teachers with an intelligent teaching assistant, Teaching Buddy (Socrates), that offers real-time support tailored to the specific content and needs of each course.
Socrates, developed in collaboration with the Escalae Institute and based on its 16 Areas of Effective Educational Practice Framework Augmented Teaching helps teachers develop key competencies, optimizing their work and improving the educational experience in an integrated manner. In addition, Augmented Teaching includes Grading Assistant, an automated assessment system that frees up time by reducing the workload on feedback tasks
Augmented Teaching provides advanced tools to support and optimize teaching practice, combining a virtual assistant based on the best educational practices and an automated evaluation system that improves the efficiency and quality of the educational process.
Teaching Buddy - Socrates, the Virtual Assistant for Teaching Practice
Teaching Buddy, with Socrates as a virtual assistant, is an indispensable resource to support teachers in their daily activities. Designed to interact with teachers through various channels and provide contextualized assistance, Teaching Buddy is enriched with course-specific data, extracted from WHALE, the institutional data repository. This ensures that the interaction with Socrates is always contextualized, minimizing errors or “hallucinations” and allowing teachers to focus on what really matters.
Framework of Teaching Competencies of the Escalae Institute
Developed by the Escalae Institute and validated by the University of Turku in Finland, Teaching Buddy incorporates the 16 Domains of Effective Educational Practice Framework, which includes core competencies in the areas of planning, delivery, assessment, and instructional leadership. These competencies, supported by research in psychology, neuroscience, and didactics, are essential for effective teaching practice and can be diagnosed, developed, assessed, and prioritized.
The 16 areas include:
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Planning: Achievement of learning objectives, sequencing and ordering of content, and management of teaching resources.
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Imparting or conducting learning: Organization of space, creation of learning environments, management of diversity and teaching resources (including digital ones), contextualization of what is taught in reality and promotion of appropriate interpersonal relationships.
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Assessment: Definition of evaluation criteria and monitoring of students, providing relevant feedback.
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Leadership and Professional Development: Promoting continuous professional development and effective teaching organization.t and teaching resources.
Teaching Buddy (Socrates) features:
Teaching Buddy offers assistance to teachers in multiple areas:
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Support in creating lesson planscustomized according to the objectives and needs of the course.
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Suggestion of educational resourcesadapted to the specific content of each course.
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Assistance in teacher professional development,providing recommendations aligned with the Escalae competency framework.
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24/7 Availabilityfor consultation, planning and access to course materials, allowing teachers to focus on effective teaching and improving their practice.
Benefits for the Teacher:
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Continuous access to a teaching assistantsupported by best educational practices.
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Support in planning, delivery and evaluation,optimizing teaching time and effectiveness.
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Reduced administrative tasks and instant access to relevant course content and teaching resources.
Grading Assistant - Automated Assessment and Personalized Feedback
Why Grading Assistant?
Grading Assistant significantly reduces the time spent on assessments and feedback, a crucial aspect given the impact of these tasks on teaching workload. Through an automated process that uses institution-defined rubrics, Grading Assistant generates detailed feedback for each student, ensuring that each assessment is objective, fast and aligned with established academic criteria.
Benefits for the Teacher:
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Reducing workloadin evaluations and feedback.
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Consistency and objectivityin qualitative and quantitative feedback.
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Longerfor direct interaction with students, improving the quality of teaching.
Grading Assistant, co-developed with EAFIT University in Colombia, is a generative artificial intelligence-based assessment system that uses rubrics to analyze deliverables and provide qualitative and quantitative feedback. By allowing teachers to automate part of the assessment process, Grading Assistant frees up valuable time that can be spent interacting with students, positively impacting the educational experience.
