Jisc helps further education colleges use AI to make teachers’ lives easier

Jisc’s national centre for AI launches pilot of TeacherMatic to cut staff workload and allow teachers to prioritise education over admin  

Jisc is helping UK FE colleges explore how AI can reduce workload for staff with TeacherMatic, an AI-based tool specifically designed to make teachers’ lives easier. 

Supported by Jisc’s national centre for AI in tertiary education, teachers at eight colleges will explore how TeacherMatic, which uses AI to carry out routine tasks like lesson planning and resource creation, can help to free up teachers’ time, allowing them to prioritise education over admin and helping them to be more effective in the classroom. 

“This project with TeacherMatic is part of Jisc’s work to increase the skills, understanding and readiness of FE colleges for a digitised future,” says Jisc’s head of AI and codesign, Sue Attewell. “The pilot will enable all participants to find out more about the positive impacts of using AI. At the same time, implementing TeacherMatic will help staff increase their confidence and skills in using the AI tools they need to succeed.” 

TeacherMatic uses generative AI to create high-quality classroom resources in a fraction of the time it would usually take. By simply inputting the desired topic, teachers can generate a variety of materials such as lesson plans, schemes of work, grading criteria for assessments and multiple-choice quizzes to check learning. The easy-to-use tool also enables them to customise materials to meet individual learner needs. 

During the 12-month pilot, staff will be given the time and training to experiment with AI. In the first stage, Jisc and participating colleges will work with TeacherMatic to pinpoint where it adds the most value. Participants will then use TeacherMatic directly while Jisc gathers feedback and evaluates benefits. On completion, a report will be published so that other institutions can learn about the effectiveness of using AI to create resources. 

“AI can be intimidating but, rather than fearing the technology, teachers should be confident they can use it to alleviate some of the challenges they face on a daily basis,” says Peter Kilcoyne, director at TeacherMatic. “Our goal is to help teachers thrive with AI by showing them how it can reduce their workload, improve their productivity and ultimately enable them to find a better work-life balance.”