A Spatiotemporal Analysis of Teacher Practices in Supporting Student Learning and Engagement in an AI-Enabled Classroom

Abstract

Research indicates that teachers play an active and important role in classrooms with AI tutors. Yet, our scientific understanding of the way teacher practices around AI tutors mediate student learning is far from complete. In this paper, we investigate spatiotemporal factors of student-teacher interactions by analyzing student engagement and learning with an AI tutor ahead of teacher visits (defined as episodes of a teacher being in close physical proximity to a student) and immediately following teacher visits. To conduct such integrated, temporal analysis around the moments when teachers visit students, we collect fine-grained, time-synchronized data on teacher positions in the physical classroom and student interactions with the AI tutor. Our case study in a K12 math classroom with a veteran math teacher provides some indications on factors that might affect a teacher’s decision to allocate their limited classroom time to their students and what effects these interactions have on students. For instance, teacher visits were associated more with students’ in-the-moment behavioral indicators (e.g., idleness) than a broader, static measure of student needs such as low prior knowledge. While teacher visits were often associated with positive changes in student behavior afterward (e.g., decreased idleness), there could be a potential mismatch between students visited by the teacher and who may have needed it more at that time (e.g., students who were disengaged for much longer). Overall, our findings indicate that teacher visits may yield immediate benefits for students but also that it is challenging for teachers to meet all needs – suggesting the need for better tool support.