Teachermatic Case Study, Leanne Howe, Gower College, August 2024
We’re excited to share this dialogue between Lynne Taylerson, who is interviewing on behalf of TeacherMatic, and Leanne Howe who is the Teaching Learning and Professional Development Manager at Gower College, Swansea. Leanne is an experienced TeacherMatic user who is passionate about encouraging other educators to embrace TeacherMatic and wider AI in their practice.
Leanne explains how TeacherMatic empowers teachers to create engaging, personalised learning and aids leaders in developing educators at the College.
You can watch Leanne and Lynne’s conversation in the video (See above video) Below, we’ve summarised key points for those who prefer to read about the impact of TeacherMatic across Gower College.
Welcome, Leanne, let's begin by asking you to introduce yourself and tell us about your role at Gower College.
Leanne introduces herself and explains that she is the Teaching Learning and Professional Development Manager at Gower College. “”All staff development falls under me, practitioner development, but also digital development and skills. To help me do my job I have a team of Teaching and Learning Mentors. We support new practitioners as they come into the workplace, help them understand the role of FE, help support staff with practitioner development and pedagogy.
We’re aiming to upskill everyone to be the most competent, confident users of digital tools, to make sure that our learners and staff are fully confident in a digital space. We have a real ambition to take practitioners and learners with us into what we call a transformative space. We’re encouraging people to see digital as one of their core tools, not a ‘bolt-on’, to make sure we’re giving the best learning experience possible.”
How has your strategy developed across the organisation? Now TeacherMatic is being used cross-college, what kinds of things are educators doing with it?
Leanne explains that: “We opened it up to the rest of our teaching staff to teach them the power of the prompt, how AI helps us rethink, reposition, repurpose, re-evaluate what we’re doing. We showed you can link the results of one generator, move them into another. Say you generated a scheme of work, taking that and plugging it into the lesson plan generator, plugging results of that into the multiple choice question generator, Then the ability to use a toggle bar to take the challenge difficulty up, allowing us to create multiple, individual assessments. You’d never have the time otherwise for creating lots more formative assessment and the ability to differentiate.
Then our lecturers that had elements of curriculum management were using lesson observation prompts – what kind of things could I look for? They were looking for what could be meaningful in an appraisal, developmental smart targets and mentoring prompts.”
So what are the future plans for the expansion of use of TeacherMatic and AI in general across the organisation?
Leanne tells us that: “We’re going to continue to develop our Digital Framework because it’s the core of everything, sharing more results and successes. We have Professional Learning Communities in the College and every staff member is in a triad. Our theme this year is ‘planning and assessment for an inclusive curriculum’. We have multiple agendas in Wales right now, Digital 2030, a drive for an anti-racist curriculum, a million Welsh speakers by 2050, reformed GCSEs. We’re going to approach the idea of Universal Design a lot more, we’re saying you have to tackle anti-racism, you have to tackle cultural appropriation, challenging those things.
We’re going to clearly signpost AI support drop-in sessions through our Peer Mentors. How can I make sure that I’m referencing multiculturalism, including Welsh? How can I make sure that I stretch and challenge my learners with higher order thinking? What topics, what ideas, what lesson plan can I have? It will help teachers meet curriculum challenges head on, using AI to help scaffold. We’re embedding the use of AI now into planning and assessment, how you start off using AI.
Then our lecturers that had elements of curriculum management were using lesson observation prompts – what kind of things could I look for? They were looking for what could be meaningful in an appraisal, developmental smart targets and mentoring prompts.”
So why TeacherMatic? Why was the decision taken by your organisation to use this particular learning technology? How did your journey begin?
Leanne explains that when she first saw TeacherMatic she realised it was designed ‘by teachers for teachers’. The design team were approachable, knowledgeable and passionate about what they were doing, working with teachers on a co-design journey: “There was a real willingness to listen. We signed up for a trial and we picked key practitioners to try the tool and how it works. We had teams with regular meetings to see how they used it organically to galvanise feedback.
Then we took on 300 licenses across our provision and I said [to the Teachermatic team] if we can have a way that we can upload our content that we’ve already got to help refresh and regenerate it, that is going to get your teachers in, that is going to get your hook in – and it appeared!
The one thing I really want to get across is that pedagogy is at the heart, that’s what’s important. It’s not about picking a tool that is fancy just so you’ve done it. It has to have pedagogy at its heart otherwise we’re just creating this massive multitude of resources, creating more of a workload, we’re not actually seeing productivity benefits”
Can you give us specific case studies of the TeacherMatic features that have been used most successfully by teachers in particular subject specialisms?
Leanne shares 2 innovative case studies: “Our Independent Living Skills teams have a non-assessed curriculum. Teachers created individual tests and differentiated them, creating individualised lesson plans for each learner. For example, some students are learning initial social skills on a really broad spectrum. They’re coming up with activities for an individual learner that aren’t a bore or frustration for another. It’s all about that individual destination, that has been a huge success for us, giving staff space and ideas and to come up with individual opportunities, a 1-1, personalised curriculum, that’s been fantastic.
In Language learning, teachers have been generating topic notes, getting that freshness, the ability to not regurgitate the same old thing, to have currency in discussion areas, has been a huge success because it’s allowed really quick solutions on the hop as TeacherMatic is sitting in the background all the time. So if somebody says ‘I need to practise on travel’ we can generate a new case study or a set of topics really quickly. It’s that initial getting rid of the blank page, then using that to stretch and challenge that’s been fantastic in traditional, academic, A Level subjects. We’re not saying AI gives you the perfect solution, but my gosh, it takes away that blank page and that gives us more time to be creative about the lesson, to be a facilitator of learning.”
She often starts by introducing the Learning Activities generator. “It’s a gentle way in,” says Kate. It doesn’t do your job for you; it simply offers support. You still need to think and be the expert.” By inputting prompts into the system, she shows how TeacherMatic enhances their teaching without overtaking their professional roles.
Kate suggests first using TeacherMatic to see what it can do to help make your job easier. “Explore, play, and see what it can do before using it in your practice,” she advises. This process helps educators see the practical benefits, like time-saving and supportive features, which can alleviate their initial fears.
Finally, Kate encourages colleagues to recognise TeacherMatic as an assistant, which enhances their capabilities. “It’s not scary anymore once you see it as a helper when you need a boost or a new idea, especially on challenging days,” she concludes.
To close, what would be your message to educators who are thinking about beginning to use tools like TeacherMatic and other AI applications in their practice?
Leanne tells us that: “My sum up message is we really have to start getting on this bus right now. AI is probably going to replace traditional knowledge generation, so how we develop critical thinkers, develop wider thinking, that’s what’s going to be important. We need to learn as a profession how to do that otherwise we’re still at the bus stop, because although AI won’t replace teachers, a teacher who can use AI will!”