Technology Essentials in Education Episode 29:
How an AI Agent Deliver and Adapt Instruction in Real Time

Hello there. My name is Monica Burns and welcome to Technology Essentials and Education.

Today I chat with Abby Bell all about using AI Agents and how she's completely rethinking a traditional flipped classroom model.

Abbey has a lot of experience and insight in K-12 education, now in higher education.

She's the Director of Academic Operations at a university and she shares her work with freshman students, hundreds of them, and how she's using AI Agents.

This is a wonderful, really accessible conversation, so if you're curious about AI Agents or you're like, I don't know, Monica, if that's for me, I want you to stick around because Abbey shares so many great pieces of information and really makes this topic easier to wrap your head around.

If you're curious but not quite sure where to start, she has lots of great strategies.

Let's get into the conversation. This episode is brought to you by Jotform. Jotform provides an all-in-one solution to streamline administrative tasks, enhance community engagement, and foster innovation.

Using their no-code drag-and-drop forms and workflows, your teams can securely collect and store data, automate tasks, and collaborate on team resources.

Educational institutions are also eligible for a 30% discount on Jotform Enterprise. Head to their website to learn more. Jotform.com slash enterprise slash education.

Welcome to the podcast. I am so excited to talk with you about this topic today, but before we get into all of it, can you share a bit with listeners or viewers, you know, what is your role in education? What does your day-to-day look like?

Sure. So, based on what I'm sharing today, I think it's important to note that I have the full spectrum of education.

I worked for 10 years in K-12 education as a teacher and then as a vice principal and then I moved into higher education.

Now I'm working at Lipscomb University and I'm pursuing my doctorate in leadership and innovation.

I work in the provost office as the director of academic operations and I teach the freshman seminar at Lipscomb.

I have a lot of different experiences and perspectives.

I'm sure you're hearing right from the freshmen as well as the students and colleagues that I work with now.

You've been using the Jotform ecosystem in some really creative ways and that's what we're going to unpack together in this conversation.

But first, can you walk us through how you got started with Jotform?

Our office was in a transition between two employees and so I had the privilege of doing two jobs at one time and I needed something to automate some of the processes because I didn't have enough time to do everything.

I found Jotform then and it was so efficient and helped so much that it just kind of evolved and I've really started using it in some fun ways.

It makes the systems run more cleanly for me and my role in the provost office.

A couple years ago, or maybe last year, Jotform did a promo video for a new thing they were launching and it was the AI presenter agents.

Lipscomb's kind of ahead of the curve with AI and education so I was like, I think I probably need to jump on that one and see what that's about.

They were promoting the presenter agent using an example of hotels and how you can use the presenter agent for your business.

I watched it and was like, this is great for education. This is going to be such an amazing tool.

I picked it up then and made my first presenter agent for our freshman seminar course.

That presenter agent taught them how to build their own bot on Bootlebox.

Before I even follow up there, you said a bunch of words that come to mind for educators who are evaluating different platforms or experiences.

You said efficiency, automate, systems, all things that we're looking for when we're making a choice on what's worth our time during the day and what kind of brain capital we can invest in learning something new.

You mentioned the AI presenter agent and one example of what you're doing with your students.

For someone who hasn't seen an AI presenter agent in action, how would you describe what it does and what it looks like from even a student's perspective?

I think the easiest way to describe a presenter agent is like it's a PowerPoint.

You simply upload a PowerPoint into Jotform and then you give a script to an AI Agent that will present the PowerPoint for you.

One of the cool things about Jotform is that aside from giving it a script, you can also teach the agent to ask questions and then train it on how to answer any response that might come up.

It looks like a presenter, just a PowerPoint that students can click through and see the different slides and there's a script that goes with it so that they're taught.

That idea of interacting with content in a different way than they might during other parts of the semester or week is pretty powerful in terms of getting content to students.

You have a bot that can answer questions because you have helped train it to make sure it's just right for a group of students.

You piloted the Jotform AI presenter agent with over 750 freshmen, is that number right?

That's a lot. What was that experience like and what surprised you most about watching an AI Agent deliver and adapt instruction in real time?

I loved using the agent because one of the things I really like is that in a traditional flipped classroom, maybe a professor will just do a one-shot film of themselves teaching something.

They'll do a lecture on the whiteboard, cut it off, and send it to the student, which is great in theory.

But when I was a principal, one of the things that always drove me crazy during teacher evaluations is that I want to see the students interacting with the professor during the lecture piece.

In a video, you can't do that, but you can with the presenter agent.

One of the cool things about the Jotform presenter agent is that you can see the conversations that the students are having with the agent.

You can see where they needed more information, where they're asking questions, and where there was some confusion.

You can see which slides they watched over and over again to understand the content.

It shows you on the conversations page when a user returned to a slide multiple times.

You can see where the student was struggling and needed to review the content multiple times before they understood how to do what you asked them to do.

That really helps engage the student. Those checks for knowledge are so important and make this tool so helpful over just a traditional video posted online.

You used the word traditional and I was thinking that the idea of a traditional flipped classroom sounds funny because it's not a concept that's been around for very long.

But traditionally it is maybe that whiteboard recording or someone narrating a PowerPoint slide.

Having that extra level of interactivity and not just saying I'll see you tomorrow and we'll talk about this is powerful.

I can now say before we come together, everyone went back to slide five, which tells me something about my delivery or the content.

We need to linger there a little bit more and that means something for what we're going to do moving forward.

That level of formative assessment data you're gathering and the ability to take action on that information is crucial.

In a traditional flipped classroom environment, students might have watched a video and not been sure what their next step was or where to go for help.

Maybe they're googling something to find an answer and not getting a great source or becoming more confused.

This is so much more of a guided experience.

We're going to jump right into it with a question about the flipped classroom experience, which is so interesting and you alluded to building a flipped classroom model around this.

What does that structure look like for you all?

I love flipped classrooms for many reasons.

It reprioritizes Bloom's taxonomy in the classroom.

Traditionally, when you're doing a lecture, you're focused on the bottom quadrants of Bloom's taxonomy pyramid, remembering and understanding.

You're not getting into applied learning, analyzing, evaluating, or creating, which are the higher order thinking skills where students need help.

When I flip the classroom, the presenter agent is doing the homework now.

What used to be the lecture in the classroom is now the homework piece.

My students watch my lecture via Jotform agent and interact with the agent.

They have to say their name at the front of the presenter agent, which asks who am I talking to today?

That interaction is graded as their homework assignment.

They answer questions, maybe reflect or check for knowledge as they go through it.

Then in the classroom, I'm doing what they would traditionally do as homework.

The projects are being done in class.

I'm concerned that students are not reading and many freshmen don't know how to read at a college level.

Teaching them how to read and notate is something I do in the classroom.

I teach in the classroom like I used to teach in a kindergarten class with centers.

They have a reading center, a writing center, a come be with the teacher center, and a group work center.

All the things they used to do out of class, they're doing in the classroom now.

I'm glad you explained it that way because it helps someone envision what that experience is like both on their own and when physically present in an environment.

To honor the traditional flipped classroom model, you're doing all those things with additional layers addressing newer challenges like critical thinking and reading comprehension skills.

I love the center rotation model. I'm a former elementary school teacher and sometimes that model is right for a group moving through activities and centers within a space.

There's that AI component with their learning experience as they work through a lecture.

You're addressing concerns about AI use for students by having everyone together supporting them as readers and during collaborative moments where they may be offline.

As you think about different use cases for Jotform, not just the AI presenter agent but also Jotform AI assistant, I know you built one that helps students with scheduling and logistics.

How has that changed the way you spend your face-to-face time with students?

I have a teaching assistant agent who answers questions about the syllabus.

If a student is confused, they can schedule an appointment with me or the chat feature will alert me if it doesn't know how to answer a question.

If I'm available, I can jump in and chat with the student myself, which is great.

It puts me at the fingertips of my students so they can access me anytime they need in theory.

That first pass of interruption goes through that extra channel.

I tend to use Jotform for initial intake information like telling me about yourself.

I also do check-ins with students, especially freshmen, because retention is a big deal and they don't know what they don't know yet.

I send them a Jotform as a touch point asking how they're doing, what's going on in their life, what they're proud of, and what's stressing them out.

That gives me something to respond to, like if they're stressed about a biology exam, I can share resources they might not know they have.

That's another way I've been using the platform to make my class better.

Especially for freshmen who might not know when to ask for help or what's okay to share or who their people are to check in with.

Having that automation to give space for someone to share information every few weeks is valuable.

Then I have it organized with trends I can look at.

There's so much you can do to gather actionable information with the platform.

Thinking more generally about AI and education, specifically higher education, where do you think AI in higher education is headed over the next few years? What excites you the most and what should we pay close attention to?

What excites me the most is that AI is forcing educators to do higher order thinking in classrooms.

We can't just introduce things and test for knowledge anymore.

This really levels up what we have to do as educators.

It's awesome and slightly terrifying because many traditional ways we worked can't be done anymore.

The cheating culture coming out of AI is making us go back to basics.

That's one reason I flipped my classroom because I need to know when students are doing the work themselves.

If they're not doing it in the classroom, it's harder to know when they've used AI to write or skim a paper.

We had Michael Hernandez on the podcast earlier this year and he uses the term uncheatable assessments.

You really have to push the critical thinking aspect because there's no way to put that aside.

That's more important than ever and really necessary.

I appreciate your framing of awesome and terrifying because much of the work I do with educators involves automation or having a collaborator to go to.

If you don't have a community to ask for support from, it's okay to hold on to different feelings as we navigate these spaces.

It's crucial that we prioritize the most important things like critical thinking.

For someone listening who might not know what an AI Agent is or is just starting to wrap their head around it, what advice would you give for taking a first step?

My best advice when doing your first agent is to keep it simple.

Agents can be slippery if you don't know how to make them.

The more complicated you try to make an agent and the more information you give it, the less likely it is to give the responses you want.

You can give it too much information.

I recommend minimizing and making just a syllabus agent so the agent knows how to do just your syllabus and get in contact with you.

The presenter agent is great because you're teaching one lesson, not the whole course content, with specific knowledge related to that lesson.

For anybody starting out, that is my best advice.

There are ways of stacking agents and making it complicated, but if you're starting out, just keep it simple.

Those are great examples.

I'm glad you mentioned stacking agents because people hear AI Agents and think of agents interacting or building upon one another.

That doesn't have to be where you start or end.

You start simple with one clear thing, like a syllabus or presentation, to keep your output high quality and connected to your intention and goal.

You've shared many great reasons for creating AI Agents over the semester.

Where can people connect with you and learn more about your work?

The best place is my LinkedIn page.

You're welcome to go there.

I also have a substack and a website where people can connect with me.

So LinkedIn is the main place.

Perfect.

We'll make sure to give that shout out to follow Abby Bell on LinkedIn and find her substack.

I know I'm going to add myself to the list as soon as we finish today.

Thank you so much, Abby, for your time, energy, enthusiasm, and actionable ideas for listeners today.

You're very welcome. Such a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Abby Bell had so many wonderful things to share in this conversation.

My wheels are spinning about using AI Agents in my work.

Although I'm sure you've already clocked a few takeaways, I want to wrap this up with a few ways to put these ideas into action.

First, use AI presenter agents to deliver interactive lectures that students can pause, rewind, and engage with on their own time.

Flip your classroom so class time is spent on higher order thinking activities like projects, reading, and collaboration.

Review conversation logs from AI Agents and see where students are struggling and adjust instruction accordingly.

Finally, start simple when building your first AI Agents by focusing on one lesson or one task like a syllabus assistant.

Make sure to follow Abby on LinkedIn.

You heard her share many great pieces of information, a wonderful resource if you're exploring AI Agents.

A big thank you to Jotform, the presenter of today's episode.

To learn more about Jotform and how educational institutions can get a 30% discount on Jotform Enterprise, head to Jotform.com slash enterprise slash education.