Investigating Using AI to Write Reports Efficiently

AI in Education

A few days ago I posted on Twitter about an AI report-writing program called realfastreports.com (https://realfastreports.com/?s=pt). In that post, I made the promise (specifically to @Jane Caswell) to explore the program and consider other ways that AI Writing is impacting education. I contacted realfastreports.com and used their free trial (they were very friendly actually). The article below is a result of that exploration and my considerations about the future role AI has is helping teachers write personalised reports and how AI writing tools may fit in our classrooms.

How can teachers Use AI?

There has recently been an explosion of creative AI tools that everyday users can employ. Creative AI initiatives like DALL E 2 allow users to make gorgeous art within seconds. I recommend watching some DALL E 2 creations on YouTube. However, AI can also be used to write content.?

There are many AI writing tools available online. Some of these AI writing tools are designed for specific tasks like writing marketing copy or generating product descriptions. However, there are also general AI writing tools that can be used for any type of writing. It seems that the most popular AI writing tools are machine learning platforms that allow users to train their own AI models. These types of AI programs can be used to create everything from novels to poems to blog posts and even assignment essays!?

Recently an EDU influencer 'Rob McTaggart' posted online a video of him using GPT-3 to write a 1500-word essay in under 45 seconds. Clearly, the game has changed. These immersive technologies are no longer 5 years away in the future they are here right now.?

How can teachers use an AI writing tool??

There are a few different ways that you can use AI as a writing tool. The first way is to use an AI writing tool to generate ideas. To do this, you simply feed the AI tool a prompt and it will generate ideas for you. This could be a great way to demonstrate a writing style or explore a topic with the whole class quickly.

The second way you can use AI as a writing tool is for it to help you with the actual writing. For example, you can use an AI to fix grammar, spelling, and even sentence structure. You have been using an AI tool, like Grammarly already?

The third way that you can use AI as a writing tool is to use an AI tool to create entire pieces of writing for you. Teachers could use AI in this way either for their students or lighten their own administrative burden. This is where concepts like Real Fast Reports, which started this investigation, fit!

Imagine setting students a writing task, perhaps an essay response to a novel they have been studying. You could have students, within seconds, craft the bulk of the essay, with correct formatting, using an AI tool. The class could then grade the essay against the marking rubric, exploring where the AI was deficient. Students would address these deficiencies by adding in quotes from the text, including links to real-world situations that reflect the issues raised in the book and adding personal thoughts and connections. In a short lesson, you could have built an extremely robust written sample of work.

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Using AI to Write Reports

We know that one of the biggest challenges that teachers face is a lack of time to do what is needed to do. AI writing tools can crush some of the administrative tasks that teachers hate within seconds.

Report writing is incredibly time-consuming and often as a result teachers create a bank of comments apply them to students and tweak the comments to personalise them as much as possible.

Imagine using an AI writing tool, inserting very personalised and specific prompts about individual students and having well-written comments that are highly original and very personalised created within seconds!

We know from personal experience, and from the Australian Educational Research Council 3 year study into the value of school reports and communicating student progress, that students and parents want report comments to be specific, to be personalised and targeted, and to include information on the next steps of learning. Imagine using a tool like 'Real Fast Reports' to craft detailed comments within seconds!

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Real Fast Reports

Real Fast Reports (https://realfastreports.com/?s=pt) is an online program that leverages AI to take the specific bullet points you want to write about an individual student and craft that into a personalised comment that reads just like you wrote it. It is fast and saves you hours of time. Teachers can se specific syllabus indicators, your notes on the individual child and your tips on future learnings and a detailed comment will be generated.

Here is a how-to video that explains how simple realfastreports.com is to use: https://youtu.be/tUE4NIJVmQ4

The aim of Real Fast Reports seems to be to save teachers time both in actually writing each report, but also to minimise the burden of proofreading for all educators involved in the school's reporting process.

To be honest, I just took advantage of the free trial they have running to see how personalised I can make the reports sound and because the actual energy of writing the paragraph is taken off your shoulders your time is spent thinking of how to personalise the report feedback instead, and shouldn't that be where teachers spend their energy? The idea is that teachers can focus on giving meaningful feedback to students, rather than crafting a beautifully composed paragraph, and that students don’t look at their friends’ reports, find the same stock phrases, and feel that the feedback is not personal to them. This personalisation was quite impressive and the opposite of what I was expecting to find.

These AI writing tools are changing the game in education; we as educators need to make sure we are taking full advantage of this technology to easily improve the quality and ‘EFFICIENCY’ of our work, our lessons, our feedback and importantly our report writing.

I love the idea that teachers can use a tool that personalises feedback for students but at the same time saves teachers loads of time and stress!