Rachel Jordan

An analysis of 100,000 hours of audio from K-12 classrooms showed that students spoke for only SEVEN SECONDS for each hour on average. And some companies are leveraging AI to help change that. @TeachFX, a company that provides AI-powered instructional feedback for teachers, is the company that conducted that 100,000-hour analysis. With TeachFX, teachers can get a private, on-demand classroom observation to help them understand and reflect on parts of their instructional practice. After the session, they get a report that includes: ➡️ Classroom talk ratios (student vs. teacher talk time) ➡️ How long students spoke for on average ➡️ What types of questions were being asked ➡️ And more… Keara Phipps, an elementary school teacher from Atlanta, used TeachFX to reduce her classroom talk time, achieving a 50:50 teacher-to-student talk ratio, emphasizing that "students should be equal participants in their learning.” In a recent pre-registered randomized controlled trial involving 523 Utah mathematics and science K-12 teachers, researchers found that automated feedback with TeachFX increased teachers’ use of focusing questions by 20%. “Focusing questions" probe students’ thinking by pressing for explanations and reflection. Similarly, a recent Stanford-led study found that another automated feedback tool (called M-Powering Teachers) improved instructors’ use of a practice known as uptake, where teachers acknowledge, reiterate, and build on students’ contributions. “When teachers take up student contributions by, for example, revoicing them, elaborating on them, or asking a follow-up question, they amplify student voices and give students agency in the learning process”, wrote the authors of the study. Based on reading these studies, it seems like there’s still a lot more to be done to make the platforms better. But, in a world where schools are struggling to hire and retain teachers, it’s encouraging to start to see how AI can provide teachers with immediate support in a scalable way.