Preamble
- Feedback is recognized as a powerful tool for improving outcomes, supported by extensive research.
- Teachers understand the importance of feedback deeply.
- Despite its significance, providing impactful feedback often feels challenging.
- The effort to deliver meaningful feedback can impact lesson quality, pastoral care, or teacher well-being.
- Instant feedback is highly valued but has been difficult to achieve—until now.
Instant feedback means responding to a student’s writing immediately. While it can be achieved in low-tech environments, it typically requires a one-to-one relationship, such as that between a professional athlete and their coach. As class sizes increase, a teacher’s ability to divide attention and maintain immediacy diminishes. This challenge is compounded in writing tasks, where educators need significant time to read and process students’ work before providing meaningful feedback. Meanwhile, students take time to produce writing suitable for review.
With instant feedback, students can revise their work more quickly, interact more deeply with their ideas and skills, and consolidate their learning more effectively. These immediate revisions help store knowledge in long-term memory, creating more engaged learners. Students experience a sense of collaboration and can struggle productively without surpassing their curiosity threshold. Immediate feedback shows them the direct results of their efforts, reducing the isolating nature of writing as a solitary activity.
However, feedback must not replace the productive struggle essential for learning. Constructive struggle engages students’ minds, allowing them to build understanding and adjust their knowledge when they encounter contradictions—following Piaget’s constructivist principles. If feedback is instant and constant, the line between student-driven and teacher/AI-driven work becomes blurred. Setting clear boundaries for feedback ensures an optimal balance between challenge and support.
Where Feedback Happens
Traditional methods—such as a teacher circulating the classroom to provide live, personalized feedback—remain invaluable for building connections with students. However, achieving both immediacy and connection at scale would require a one-to-one teacher-student ratio or, more realistically, the integration of technology. Until recently, technology has not been capable of providing valuable, actionable feedback instantly.
Now, with AI-enabled solutions, students can receive immediate feedback tailored to their specific writing issues, allowing them to take meaningful action. Simultaneously, teachers gain richer insights, enabling them to deliver higher-order feedback in class and strengthen relationships with students. By sharing the workload with AI, teachers can focus more on their learners, creating a future where technology supports humanity rather than replacing it.
How Scribo Achieves This
- Focusing on the Process of Writing
Scribo prioritizes the development of writing skills throughout the process rather than focusing solely on the final product. Instant feedback helps students consolidate their learning in long-term memory, with the ultimate goal of making them independent writers who no longer rely on AI. By using scaffolding and personalized feedback, Scribo ensures that students produce authentic work while progressing steadily. - ‘Educator-in-the-Loop’ Philosophy
Scribo ensures that educators retain full control over the feedback process. From the design of the user interface to the functionality of the AI, every aspect of Scribo’s development involves educators. Teachers can customize, adjust, or disable any AI feature to suit their unique teaching context, keeping the quality of feedback firmly in their hands. - Supporting Implementation
Schools often hesitate to adopt revolutionary technology, not due to lack of interest or capability, but because of overwhelming workloads. Scribo understands these challenges because its team includes educators with hands-on experience. Scribo’s implementation process is designed to minimize disruptions while guaranteeing measurable improvements in learning outcomes.
From Past Challenges to Present Solutions
Traditionally, collecting, reviewing, and marking student work was a laborious process. It often took weeks for students to receive feedback, and even then, additional time was required to clarify comments during conferences. These delays diminished the impact of feedback, leaving students disengaged from the revision process.
Now, Scribo enables week-long writing activities where students receive immediate, AI-powered feedback to refine their skills and craft stronger arguments. Teachers, in turn, gain actionable data about their class’s writing progress, enabling real-time conferences with students. This approach fosters deeper engagement, strengthens connections, and improves outcomes. An independent study found that Scribo improved students’ writing scores by an average of 15% and reduced writing errors by 25% over 11 weeks. Additionally, 85% of teachers reported increased student engagement, while 90% observed a significant boost in writing confidence.
The Future of Writing Education
Looking ahead, personalized AI tools could further enhance education by interacting with teachers’ AI assistants to provide even richer data on each student’s learning journey. This would enable teachers to deliver holistic, instantaneous feedback while accelerating knowledge acquisition. The goal is to create environments where learners progress at their own pace and teachers coach students to reach their full potential, transforming them into skilled, confident writers.
Shall we begin?