TeacherMatic Higher Education Pilot Report
The TeacherMatic Higher Education Pilot Report details a collaboration with Jisc’s artificial intelligence team. It demonstrates how the TeacherMatic platform streamlined content creation tasks and eased teachers’ workloads during a trial with higher education organisations. The results highlight TeacherMatic’s ease of use and time-saving benefits.
Contents
This report provides a comprehensive review of TeacherMatic, detailing its initial pilot implementation, evaluation results, participant experiences, future development plans, and a summary of key findings
Introduction
Since its launch in 2023, TeacherMatic has been designed to help educators efficiently create high-quality learning materials using generative AI.
The platform was evaluated in a 2024 pilot with seven Higher Education (HE) institutions, ensuring ongoing improvements while aligning with ethical AI adoption. In collaboration with Jisc, the pilot assessed the quality of AI-generated content and its effectiveness in supporting educators while upholding ethical standards. Jisc’s pilot programmes provide institutions with first-hand experience of emerging technologies and generate insights for the wider education community.
The report presents key findings from the pilot, demonstrating how TeacherMatic supports educators by improving productivity and maintaining high-quality content creation.
Pilot Parameters
The pilot aimed to trial TeacherMatic in higher education across various subject areas and academic levels, evaluating both the quality and relevance of AI-generated content. The goal was to assess how well the platform facilitated ethical and effective AI adoption in higher education.
A training session introduced participants to the platform and its functionalities. The pilot was then structured into two phases: Phase One ran from January to February 2024, followed by Phase Two from March to July 2024. Each participating institution received 50 licenses for 12 months, allowing approximately 350 educators to engage actively with and evaluate the platform.
The following HE institutions participated in the pilot:
✔ University College Birmingham
✔ Stranmillis University College
✔ University of Chester
✔ University of East Anglia
✔ University of Strathclyde
✔ University of Sunderland
✔ University of Westminster
Key Participant Feedback and Findings
- TeacherMatic significantly reduced time spent on resource creation and idea generation.
- The user-friendly interface enabled educators to create diverse materials, such as presentation outlines, lesson plans and discussion topics, without prompt engineering expertise.
- The platform positively impacted teaching methods, enhancing creativity and serving as a valuable starting point for tasks like lesson planning.
- TeacherMatic is especially useful for remote educators, resulting in effectively generated and refined content when in-person collaboration is limited.
- Content quality improved when participants uploaded materials they had created into the generator.
- The feedback generator saved time and improved the quality of learner feedback.
Highlighted Areas for Development
✔ Enhance the academic level of generated content to better align with HE standards.
✔ Optimise the Bloom’s Taxonomy feature and complexity slider to meet HE requirements.
✔ Improve the PowerPoint generator by enhancing image quality, deepening content and expanding the ten-slide limit.
The Report in Numbers
69% of participants said TeacherMatic enhanced learning experiences by accelerating feedback, generating assessment and discussion topics and suggesting mentoring methods for students.
63% of participants would recommend TeacherMatic for HE.
86% of respondents said the pilot had enhanced their understanding of generative AI and its capabilities.
51% of participants said TeacherMatic saved time when creating teaching resources. On average, users said they saved two hours per week by using TeacherMatic.
68% of participants reported that TeacherMatic helped them get started when creating resources.
The Next Steps
With a focus on continuous improvement and enhancing the user experience, TeacherMatic has acknowledged participants’ feedback, with the following enhancements already underway to better align with HE requirements.
✔ The complexity slider is replaced with a more advanced system for greater control over output levels.
✔ A new system will replace the Bloom’s Taxonomy feature, incorporating alternative pedagogical models such as Rosenshine’s instructional principles and SOLO, as well as sector-specific options for HE and FE.
✔ A text-only presentation generator has been introduced, featuring a preview function, slide regeneration and AI-generated images to improve subject coverage.
These developments reflect TeacherMatic’s ongoing commitment to supporting educators with effective, high-quality AI-driven tools.
Summary
The TeacherMatic Higher Education Pilot Report highlighted the platform’s strengths in streamlining resource creation and enhancing educators’ creativity. Particularly valuable for remote educators, it provided an intuitive way to generate diverse teaching materials, with positive feedback on its ease of use and impact across various subjects and levels.