About 500 students and 25 teachers from 10 Queensland state schools are trialling an artificial intelligence teaching and learning tool called Cerego. Photo: Lorado.
A new artificial intelligence (AI) teaching and learning tool is being trialled across 10 Queensland public schools.
About 500 students from years five to 12 and 25 teachers will use the tool called Cerego across a wide range of subjects.
The tool provides quiz-based learning that quickly adjusts to the needs of individual students using generative AI and machine learning.
Teachers remain at the centre of classroom learning by providing Cerego with the quiz design parameters to specifically target the needs of students.
Cerego then uses machine learning based on the student’s answers to provide a personalised, tailored learning experience for them to progress through the content.
While applications like ChatGPT are open source which can lead to issues with accuracy, Cerego’s source information is a digitised version of the full Queensland curriculum.
Queensland Education Minister Grace Grace said AI presented incredible opportunities for the state’s classrooms and would be transformative for teaching and learning.
“For teachers AI is about saving time, reducing workload, and ensuring the technology is intuitive and easy to use. For students it provides a tailored interactive learning experience that quickly adapts to their individual needs,” she said.
“We need the right safeguards too: we can’t have a situation where private data is sold off, where academic integrity is compromised, or where AI is used to bully students or target teachers.
“The views and experiences of teachers, students, schools and families will continue to be critical in developing Queensland’s approach to use of AI in state schools.”
The trial is one of several initiatives by the state government to explore the use of AI in digital innovation and learning. These include, school-based communities of practice for school leaders, teachers and business managers with an interest in AI, extending the use of Academic Integrity courses developed by the Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority and a trial of Microsoft Bing Chat for staff in some schools.
The Queensland Government noted their Equity and Excellence strategy to improve educational outcomes for students, including through digital innovation in teaching and learning, as well as the Australian Framework for Generative Artificial Intelligence in Schools. The framework was developed with industry and community feedback and released in July to support the safe and ethical use of AI in education.
It was endorsed in October during a meeting between Australian, state and territory government education ministers and the Queensland Government said the Cerego trial was consistent with its principles.
Trial learnings will be used to develop resources about AI usage in state schools in 2024 and to support Education Services Australia to produce a separate framework for developing AI school products.
