Students give CourseMojo mixed reviews, with some reporting that the chatbot has improved their writing skills and others expressing frustration with vague or confusing feedback.
Allentown Superintendent Carol Birks has wholeheartedly embraced AI, and CourseMojo’s rollout is just one example of how the district is investing in the technology. Others include the development of an artificial intelligence track at Bridgeview Academy, a summer student AI Institute at DeSales University, and expanded staff professional development focused on AI applications.
Educators employed by CourseMojo trained the tool on the Allentown School District’s literacy curriculum, StudySync, which means a human wrote the criteria to determine if a student response meets the targeted learning objectives.
When students input answers to reading comprehension questions or writing prompts, the feedback they get comes from a bank of human-produced responses.
Essentially, CourseMojo relies on artificial intelligence to sort student answers based on whether they meet some, all or none of the criteria educators set for a correct response. Then the chatbot sends feedback based on what educators programmed in as a helpful response to nudge students to either improve their answer or move on.
“It’s not meant to replace the teaching,” veteran South Mountain Middle School educator Suzie Bichovsky said, noting that her students engage with the chatbot but continue to ask her for help.
Bichovsky’s classroom is a mix of old and new technologies, with student desks housing both composition notebooks used for freewrites and running notes, and laptops used for digital lessons.
Students still have physical workbooks that contain texts and discussion questions. That material has been inputted into CourseMojo, so students can read and respond in the chatbots’ bright purple windows rather than manually writing answers.
Receiving feedback from a chatbot means each student gets an immediate response, which isn’t possible when a teacher is circulating among 30 students, Bichovsky said.
“I think it’s fostered a little more independence,” Bichovsky said, noting that students will often move unprompted in small group discussions where they ask each other about the CourseMojo feedback they received.
“It helps us through it and gives us guidance,” South Mountain sixth grader Briar Novak said.
Although the feedback sometimes seems repetitive, Novak said it helps her “get unstuck” while writing.
Laniyah Velez, the Trexler Middle School sixth grader who called Coursemojo “basically a teacher online,” said groupwork can be frustrating when students feel they input essentially the same answer but receive different feedback.
Velez’ classmate Maria Marroquin said the chatbot can tell students where to find evidence for their responses and can help them improve sentence structure and punctuation.
Students are still discovering the full range of what CourseMojo can do. When Marroquin said it would be useful to add translation capabilities, Velez pointed out how to access that function.
IMPROVINNG THE PRODUCT
Constant product refinement based on student and teacher feedback is a large part of CourseMojo’s customer support strategy.
CourseMojo Director of School Success Hope Evans said classroom observations revealed that students were simply clicking through feedback when it came as a large chunk of text, so the company reformatted feedback into a short, bulleted list that ends with an action step that directs students on what to do next.
The $45,000 cost of CourseMojo — which includes licensing, coaching and set-up costs for the district — is being covered by Digital Promise, a nonprofit that supports technology in education.
In addition to Allentown, the company works with more than 75 districts across the country, serving nearly 60,000 students in places like California, Texas, Florida and New York. The company is currently focused on support reading and writing instruction in language arts courses.
Student complaints that grammar tips were vague or hard to understand motivated the company to create mini lessons that can be assigned to those who need skills practice, Evans said, adding that many schools lack the time to implement direct grammar instruction.
Evans worked in K-12 education for 12 years, starting as a middle school language arts teacher and progressing to become a principal and then a principal coach. CourseMojo recruits people who not only have worked in education but have progressed to that mentor level to ensure they have the experience necessary to assist teachers and school leaders, Evans said.
Evans said she was so skeptical of ed tech during her teaching career that she imagines former colleagues would be surprised to see her working for CourseMojo. However, she feels the company’s level of collaboration with educators breaks the pattern of technology companies dropping new tools into schools and saying “good luck.”
“You have to be listening. You have to be watching,” Evans said. “You have to be responding to feedback.”
The company is developing curriculum for seventh and eighth grade. Melissa Smith, executive director of learning and teaching for the Allentown School District, said the district is still working with the school board to determine how it might expand CourseMojo usage.
CourseMojo lessons use content that comes directly from the district’s chosen curriculum, rather than being a supplementary resource, Smith said, which gives the tool an edge over other digital learning options.
“There’s a lot of convenience to it, honestly,” said Trexler language arts teacher Richie Ares. He likes the tool so much he’s been saving CourseMojo lesson plans just in case it ever goes away.
The version of CourseMojo he’s using now looks completely different than what he started with in September, Ares said.
The company has been responsive to feedback about particular questions that students find tricky, Ares said, adding that he also appreciates a new function that suggests students who might need a conference with the teacher.
As Ares used CourseMojo to guide students through a reading comprehension lesson centered on the concept of “being a trailblazer,” he would periodically stop the room and talk through common misconceptions the chatbot had identified.
For example, CourseMojo indicated that many students were confusing “being a trailblazer” with “being skilled,” so Ares reiterated with students that trailblazing characters are innovators.
The software allows teachers to pause all students’ screens. They can also track individual responses, with colored dots indicating correct versus partially correct answers.
Teachers also can view how many times each student attempted a question and see why partially correct answers were flagged.
In addition to tracking what might be causing students to struggle, Ares said he likes to take a look at answers the software highlights as particularly strong and worth sharing out.
“It’s only improved, which is really cool,” Ares said of the CourseMojo interface.
Bichovsky said she’s always been a “highly interactive” teacher and that she trusts CourseMojo to actively engage the class while she selects students for more in-depth discussions.
While there is always room for improvement, the chatbot has already come a long way in its usefulness, she added.
“I’m constantly reminding myself this is year one with this,” Bichovsky said.
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