Dive Brief:

• Artificial intelligence software from Boston-based Cognii will use natural language processing to offer immediate feedback to Colorado State University psychology students on essay assignments.
• Xconomy reports the software works like voice-command programs on smartphones, where instead of answering a question, the program asks one and then determines how students could improve their response to be more accurate.
• The software is expected to help students during formative assignments, improving the quality of work they eventually submit to professors, and it will give instructors a new layer of insight into student performance, including analytics data.

Dive Insight:

Colleges and universities across the board are trying to figure out how to improve online course offerings. It is a matter of competitive advantage and mission. How can schools improve the outcomes of remote learners? Competency-based education programs rely on personalized learning, tailoring lesson sequences and pacing to the individual skills of students. Continued improvements to artificial intelligence technology will undoubtedly improve these types of programs.

When online courses are used to increase efficiency and instructors are expected to teach more students per class, technology like Cognii can help faculty get away from a reliance on multiple choice, easy-to-grade assignments, at least as students are still learning. Key will be ensuring there isn't a total loss in human interaction and teaching approaches don't become automated.