Sam Anderson-Moxley, a middle school teacher at West Hawaii Explorations Academy, has come up with a program to save educators time using artificial intelligence.
He came up with the idea last year while working on progress reports and getting grades in, feeling the time crunch.
“I had been dabbling in coding and figured out that I could probably automate some things and figure out ways to make my job as a teacher a little bit easier,” he recalled. “I started writing a few programs here and there and realized they were working out. I was able to make my life as a teacher a little bit easier.”
At that point he started thinking about how he could make a tool that is designed to help make other teachers’ lives easier.
“Teachers are really struggling all over the nation and especially here in Hawaii. We have only a 51% retention rate after five years, which is really unfortunate,” he said. “Most teachers work an average of 53 hours per week and about 25% of that time is uncompensated.
“If I have 120 students and it takes at least five minutes for me to give feedback to a student, that’s at least 10 hours a week working late nights and weekends. That was the problem. I asked myself how I could address that problem.”
That is when Anderson-Moxley planted the seed in his mind to create what was to became Roborubrics, which makes the grading process faster for teachers using Google Docs.
“Over summer, after thinking about it, I dove in and started coding away and building and came up with Roborubrics. It’s a Google Docs add-on for teachers that will allow them to give feedback to their students with the help of AI. It makes the feedback process go way faster and also provides feedback to students that is personalized, extremely useful and effective and saves the teachers a ton of time,” he explained.
He did a soft roll out at the end of January at WHEA, and so far the majority of teachers are using it.
“I’ve gotten really good feedback,” he said.
Now he is hoping to get the program out to other educators across the island and throughout Hawaii.
The subscription-based program is available to any teacher as long as they use Google Docs. Anderson-Moxley said he is also offering subscriptions to whole schools and even districts.
“At first I was worried how students would perceive it. I tell the students I have a teaching assistant and basically that assistant is a robot,” he said. “The students were so much more willing to accept that as a part of their reality than I gave them credit for. I think it’s just becoming such a ingrained part of their experience that they didn’t even second guess it.”
He said teachers in middle and high school settings will benefit most, since those teachers typically have a lot of students.
“Roborubric’s capabilities are nothing short of exceptional, revolutionizing the way we assess and provide feedback on assignments. Not only does it streamline the grading process, but it also enhances the quality of feedback provided to students …. plus gives teachers back a precious commodity: time,” said WHEA teacher Una Burns. “ … The capacity to identify patterns and trends in student performance offers valuable insights for educators. By highlighting areas of strength and areas needing improvement across a cohort of students, it empowers teachers to tailor their instruction more effectively, ultimately fostering student growth and success.”
Fellow educator Shawna Sale agrees Roborubrics is like having a free trusted teacher’s assistant.
“It has forced me clarify and fine tune my rubrics, so that my “assistant teacher” knows exactly what to look for and assess, so they are able to give specific feedback that will help me to gauge growth and development of my students’ writing,” she said. “Clarifying the rubrics has helped the students to understand their learning objectives and goals so much more, which then lends to them being more responsive to and responsible for the specific feedback given by the ‘assistant teacher.’”
His website boasts Roborubrics enables teachers to provide feedback to hundreds of documents in minutes, even generating feedback for essays as long as 10,000 words in mere seconds.
Although Roborubricks is not aimed at any particular subject, it is primarily geared toward student writing.
“Any assignment where a student has to write something or create their own work and type it up, Roborubrics can provide feedback. I eventually foresee it having the ability of have scanning capabilities where it recognizes a student’s handwriting and have more capability in math, but that is still in the works,” said Anderson-Moxley.
Right now, the AI program it is especially good for English, history and science classes with writing assignments.
Anderson-Moxley said Roborubrics is a continual work in progress.
“I’m never completely done and always want to make it better. At this point I have gotten good feedback from teachers and I want get it in the hands of more teachers so that we can hone it and make it the best possible teaching assistant for them,” he said.
Currently he is relying on word of mouth to market his program.
“Being a teacher, I don’t have millions of dollars to throw at advertising, but it’s OK to grow slow,” he mused.
For more information visit roborubrics.com. A demonstration video is also available on YouTube.
