Wooclap Launches 5 AI Tools Co-Designed by Educators

In keeping with years of recommendations from universities and education advocates that teachers be involved in the development of ed-tech tools, the interactive learning platform Wooclap recently tapped college professors across the globe to guide its launch of five narrowly purpose-built AI offerings.

Wooclap — which helps teachers integrate interactive learning tools like questions, polls and word clouds into their lessons — designed the tools with input from educators at North Carolina State University, the University of Ottawa, Nanyang Technological University, the Complutense University of Madrid and Sciences Po Paris.

According to a recent news release, educators had asked for time-saving tools, especially in preparing questions and processing answers. In response, Wooclap conferred with professors to build five AI teaching agents to extend tools like polls, brainstorming boards and image labeling with automation. The agents are also designed to integrate into existing Wooclap tools so teachers can adopt them without changing their workflows:

• The Learning Consolidator automatically creates follow-up questions based on students’ multiple-choice answers. In a webinar Oct. 2 introducing teachers to the new tools, Wooclap leaders demonstrated how teachers can upload files of student answers on a quiz and generate follow-up questions exploring what students missed.
  
• The Idea Generator is for beginning discussions, suggesting prompts and perspectives in brainstorming sessions.
  
• The Summarizer synthesizes student discussion inputs, highlighting key themes.
  
• The Image Labeler takes uploaded visuals, like scientific diagrams for historical maps, and turns them into “label an image”-style questions.
  
• The Answer Organizer groups student responses to open-ended questions by theme to help save time on grading and feedback.

Carlos Goller, a biology professor at North Carolina State University, said the AI tools are designed to prompt students to dive deeper into course material.

“These AI agents open up debates and encourage discussions we didn't always have time for before,” Goller said in the news release.

“I see real potential for the auto-label agent when working with technical diagrams,” Christian Grevisse, lecturer at the Université du Luxembourg, said in a review on Wooclap’s website. “Having the AI set up the activity in seconds instead of minutes would be a big help.”

Wooclap's news release said the tools have data protections in place certified by the International Organization for Standardization, which offers guidance on risk assessment, monitoring and response. Users can switch the features on or off and, if they do use the new tools, their data will not be used to train the model.