How teachers conceptualise shared control with an AI co-orchestration tool: A multiyear teacher-centred design process

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) can enhance teachers' capabilities by sharing control over different parts of learning activities. This is especially true for complex learning activities, such as dynamic learning transitions where students move between individual and collaborative learning in un-planned ways, as the need arises. Yet, few initiatives have emerged considering how shared responsibility between teachers and AI can support learning and how teachers' voices might be included to inform design decisions. The goal of our article is twofold. First, we describe a secondary analysis of our co-design process comprising six design methods to understand how teachers conceptualise sharing control with an AI co-orchestration tool, called Pair-Up. We worked with 76 middle school math teachers, each taking part in one to three methods, to create a co-orchestration tool that supports dynamic combinations of individual and collaborative learning using two AI-based tutoring systems. We leveraged qualitative content analysis to examine teachers' views about sharing control with Pair-Up, and we describe high-level insights about the human-AI interaction, including control, trust, responsibility, efficiency, and accuracy. Secondly, we use our results as an example showcasing how human-centred learning analytics can be applied to the design of human-AI technologies and share reflections for human-AI technology designers regarding the methods that might be fruitful to elicit teacher feedback and ideas. Our findings illustrate the design of a novel co-orchestration tool to facilitate the transitions between individual and collaborative learning and highlight considerations and reflections for designers of similar systems. Practitioner notes What is already known about this topic: Artificial Intelligence (AI) can help teachers facilitate complex classroom activities, such as having students move between individual and collaborative learning in unplanned ways. Designers should use human-centred design approaches to give teachers a voice in deciding what AI might do in the classroom and if or how they want to share control with it. What this paper adds: Presents teacher views about how they want to share control with AI to support students moving between individual and collaborative learning. Describes how we adapted six design methods to design AI features. Illustrates a complete, iterative process to create human-AI interactions to support teachers as they facilitate students moving from individual to collaborative learning. Implications for practice: We share five implications for designers that teachers highlighted as necessary when designing AI-features, including control, trust, responsibility, efficiency and accuracy. Our work also includes a reflection on our design process and implications for future design processes.