A new personal professional AI coach is helping Australian teachers to improve classroom practice through targeted guidance and mentorship.
Created by edtech company Vivedus, the ‘Viv-it’ feature has been designed specifically for teachers to lighten their administrative workloads, support them to design learning opportunities that will activate creative intelligence and track their professional growth.
Project Lead at Vivedus, Guy Richards, along with the other members of the Vivedus Development Team ensured that the model drew from knowledge across all the relevant theory of little-c creativity and the Australian Curriculum documents and Year 11 and 12 syllabuses. It was then trained in the dispositions, the pedagogies, and the assessment tools developed to measure creative intelligence.
The result was a pedagogical coach that provides teachers with personalised professional development, helping them to develop their practice for the benefit of the students.
“Traditional approaches to professional development have little to no lasting effect on a teacher’s practice,” long-term school principal and now Managing Director of Vivedus, Dr Paul Browning, told The Educator.
“This is another of the complex problems the team at Vivedus have been working on – how to deliver professional development in a cost effective and impactful manner.”
Dr Browning says the arrival of AI has provided the solution.
“AI is the disrupter we have been waiting for in education”, Dr Browning said. “AI’s capacity means that we can now support every teacher to grow and become the very best practitioner for the students in their care.
Dr Browning said that with the Vivedus Platform, school leaders will “know with certainty” the impact the Viv-it coach is having on the teaching in the classroom.
“This is truly a game changer for education,” he said.
Omni Academies was one of the first schools to adopt Vivedus. Principal Meg Foley said she is excited with the possibilities for teaching and learning that Vivi-it brings.
“It is just crazy – it’s like my own personal mentor, but what is super exciting is that it takes away the perceived judgement that a real person can bring to a mentor situation and meets you where you are at as a teacher,” Foley told The Educator.
“Not only that, but with a [human] mentor you are only going to be as good as your mentor. With Viv-it possibilities are endless. It blows me away.”