ALLENTOWN, Pa. — Allentown School District recently showcased its efforts to incorporate artificial intelligence in the classroom to improve student literacy proficiency.
At Thursday’s school board meeting, school directors got a demonstration on Coursemojo, an AI assistant teacher being piloted in sixth-grade English classes.
The computer-based tool will be expanded to seventh- and eighth-graders next school year.
Through multiple choice and open-response questions, Coursemojo prompts students to engage with a piece of text that’s listed next to the questions for students to reference.
Allentown School District administrators
Through multiple choice and open-response questions, Coursemojo prompts students to engage with a piece of text that’s listed next to the questions for students to reference.
Coursemojo personalizes its immediate feedback to help students improve their reading and writing skills. The questions and support provided by the AI assistant teacher are aligned to the district’s curriculum.
The Coursemojo pilot was funded by the philanthropy arm of Digital Promise, a global education nonprofit.
The cost of the pilot is $45,754, which includes student licenses, professional development and in-person coaching.
'The best resource'
The pilot began this school year, and so far, 1,048 ASD students and 17 teachers have been using Coursemojo.
“This is the best resource that has ever been given to me to support my students,” South Mountain Middle School literacy teacher Suzie Bichovsky-Thomas told school directors.
Bichovsky-Thomas said she lets students work both individually and in groups to complete their Coursemojo work.
The AI teacher assistant keeps track of the questions students get right, the questions they need prompting in order to answer correctly and the ones they aren’t fully understanding.
It also flags any text that has been copied from somewhere else to ensure student work is original.
"If I don’t understand something [Coursemojo] gives me an explanation and evidence on why this is the answer to something."
Lily, a sixth-grader
A South Mountain student named Lily, who accompanied Bichovsky-Thomas through the Coursemojo demonstration, said she enjoys using it.
“It shows me how much I can improve my reading skills and my typing skills,” Lily, a sixth-grader, said.
“If I don’t understand something [Coursemojo] gives me an explanation and evidence on why this is the answer to something,” she said.
Kyle Kauffman, director of innovation and instructional technology, said AI tools such Coursemojo can be used to hyper-personalize instruction for all students, including English language learners and special education students.
Kauffman said such AI tools serve as a "transformation partner."
“It is not taking the place of any human, but rather augmenting our capacities," he said.
Kauffman and others recently spoke about the use of AI in education and in the district on the inaugural episode of the district's new quarterly podcast.
In that conversation, Kauffman highlighted Coursemojo and other similar tools.