“Reflection is powerful” is a truism in education.

We want all students to learn how to effectively present evidence of their thinking, set goals that motivate them, and develop the self-awareness they need to be life-long learners. 

Teachers know that the best way to achieve this is through regular and consistent reflection.

We’ve talked with thousands of educators about their reflective practices over the years. We’ve supported reflection with the Swivl Robot and with our student-focused tools Recap and Synth. We know that while teachers’ ultimate goal is to create an environment where their students are doing frequent, high-quality reflections, it is a struggle for most to make the time to do so.

Setting up effective reflections takes planning and research. Guiding and assessing reflections is incredibly time-consuming. So reflection often takes a back seat to other forms of assessment for these logistical reasons. 

These conversations and findings influenced why we developed our newest reflection solution: Mirror.

Mirror is a solution that automates the setup, guidance, and assessment of reflections with AI. Our AI-enabled technology is delivered into classrooms through a portable, ruggedized kiosk that makes it easier than ever to build reflective routines in the classroom. 

The math of language

A classroom powered by automated reflection is now possible thanks to AI. Specifically, it is possible through one of the main technologies behind today’s popular AI – Large Language Models (LLMs). 

LLMs are designed to understand, generate, and respond to human language. They are trained on vast amounts of text data, which enables them to answer questions, write essays, summarize information, and even create content like poems or stories.

With Mirror, we use this capability to help educators easily set up reflections with effective questions. Then Mirror serves up those questions in its engaging interface to guide students to reflect effectively and conversationally. 

For those who are familiar with how AI works, this part is relatively straightforward.

Where it gets less obvious is in the assessment of reflections. At the highest level, LLMs have turned language into math.  And we can leverage this capability to turn reflective conversations back into math using specific prompts with AI.  

The opportunity this presents is that educators can now quickly analyze conversational student reflections in conventional, easy-to-read dashboards – allowing teachers to skim over the results of the reflective dialogue their entire class is having within minutes instead of hours! This is truly what we mean when we say Mirror is automating reflection.

Making reflection the future of assessment

Assessment has always been limited to what can be reviewed efficiently and objectively. This limitation is what has led us to standardize testing and create simplistic polling solutions. While it has been a necessary practice, this has always created some disconnect between learning goals and teaching. 

Now, it finally looks possible to efficiently and objectively assess and score natural, in-depth reflective conversations to easily compile insights that would normally take hours and hours of effort to achieve. This makes reflective practice something that can be incorporated as a daily activity – if not multiple times a day. 

Assessing student learning this way provides a new and more direct way for educators to understand the effectiveness of teaching methods and curriculum. It provides real-time data to identify areas of improvement. It provides a way for teachers to understand the support each of their students needs. It even surfaces the evidence of students thinking they need to establish that learning occurred and no shortcuts were taken.

As noted, with Mirror, reflective prompts can be automatically generated based on a simple recorded teacher goal. Reflection responses can then be assessed based on objective measures teachers commonly use like whether students understand the learning objective, mindset, evidence of thinking, and sentiment – all with the help of AI. 

Feedback to students on how to do effective reflections can even be automated. This helps reinforce and progress students’ reflective skills through any learning experience – compounding improvements in self-awareness and motivation over time. 

We believe that with automated reflections, teachers can now reach new heights of effectiveness with less effort than ever required. And, we believe this transforms what is possible with reflection and what is possible in our system of education itself.

The Mirror demo program

If you want to experience the power of automating reflections firsthand, sign up for the Mirror demo program. This free trial is open to all educators based in the United States and Canada.

The post Transforming what is possible with reflection using AI appeared first on Swivl.

Like most teachers, when I was in the classroom, I recognized the value of reflection and the impact it could have on student learning. Simultaneously, I struggled to find the time for my students to reflect regularly throughout the school day. When my students recorded reflections, it was overwhelming to try to watch 90+ recordings, provide tailored feedback to help them strengthen their reflective skills, and give each student the individual support they needed in person.

Can you truly automate reflection?

Swivl is a reflective tools company. We believe there is significant unrealized potential in reflecting, especially for students. When we set out to build a reflective solution for students, our first thought was to explore if we could truly automate the reflection process. Could we discover a way to make reflecting fun and engaging for students? At the same time, could we build a solution that provides teachers with robust and unbiased insights about each of their students? And, on top of it all, could this solution require minimal time and effort from teachers?

With the help of AI, we created a tool that met all of these requirements. We call it Mirror.

Mirror fully automates the reflection process for students. It takes less than 3 minutes to set up the device and record a reflection. Its unique design allows the device to be set up anywhere, so students can record reflections when they’re ready, or when they’re prompted by their teachers.

Here’s how it works:

After powering on the device, teachers scan a QR code to download the Mirror app on any mobile device, then log in.

Once logged in, teachers can create a group and then have students add themselves to the group as they use the device. We designed this experience in this way to resolve privacy concerns of students seeing each other’s reflections and scores and to save a teacher’s time. Groups can be organized for classes by subject and grade level, or by small groups of students based on reading level or interests. A Group can also be created from an existing class rostering service.

Personalize your AI-reflected self

Once a group is created, students can begin a reflection by either adding their name to the Group new or pick their name from the last time they reflected. This initiates a conversation with their AI-reflected self. An AI-reflected self is an avatar that guides students through the conversation, asking thoughtful questions throughout.

The reflected self will ask students questions like “What was the goal you were working on?” or “Were your actions aligned with your goal?” These questions are designed to automatically guide a student through an effective reflection, much like a teacher would. With the help of a student’s AI-reflected self, reflections become more effective and engaging, without adding more to a teacher’s plate. At the end of each reflection, students are offered a mindful exercise before transitioning to other activities.

Students can also personalize their AI-reflected self with colors, hairstyles, or stickers.

In addition to individual reflections, Mirror was built to work with small groups. Small groups can complete a group reflection in the same way they would complete an individual reflection. Each member of the group simply adds themselves to the reflective conversation.

Additional capabilities

As teachers begin to see the benefits of a regular reflective practice with their students, they can utilize the other functionalities of Mirror to bring more time-saving value to their classrooms.

One of the main ways teacher can utilize Mirror to bring more value to their practice is to build an outline of the goals they want students to work towards. Mirror then delivers prompts to students during their reflections to measure if they understood the goal, and if their actions were aligned with the goal.

Teachers can also create working spaces in Mirror for students to enter in. Within these spaces, there is a timer that guides you to work towards your goals, and students have access to tools like whiteboard for collaboration or recordings to develop presentation skills. Teachers can also use the recording functionality in Mirror to observe and develop their teaching skills.

Guided Activity Plans, constructed by the teacher, walk students step by step through the activity. Teachers can customize the activity plan by identifying which interactive tools can be access by the students during different parts of the activity. Reflections can also be added throughout the plan.

From recharge exercises for mindful breaks, whiteboard tools, live calls, and access to other AI tools, we are developing Mirror to be a robust tool that can be utilized in a variety of different scenarios.

Robust Insights

Mirror was designed to capture short reflections – only a few minutes in length. Instead of teachers spending hours reviewing each recording from their students, we created an AI-driven dashboard to bring insights to teachers instantly to help them understand what individualized support to their students need.

With the Mirror dashboard, teachers can dive into sentiment, reflection quality, evidence of thinking, and mindset of students’ reflections. All of this data culminates in a Reflection Quality Score. These insights surface applicable analytics for teachers to take action on.

In addition to AI-driven insights, Mirror provides teachers with AI-driven feedback. This feedback is based directly on how to improve students’ Reflection Quality Scores and gives strategies on how to do so. Teachers can elect to share this feedback with students directly when they are ready. Soon, students can login and get this feedback directly from the software and can track their own progress.

We are proud of what we’ve created with Mirror so far and believe that it will change reflective practices for students and teachers. Students can receive the tailored feedback they need to deepen and improve their reflective practices. Teachers can receive helpful insights on what steps they can take to better support their students directly.

Click here to learn more about Mirror, or to participate in a free Mirror demo.

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