Intelligent Computer Assisted English Learning

What is Wext Intelligent Feedback?

Research shows that strategies emphasising feedback provide some of the greatest influences on student learning. [see http://www.evidencebasedteaching.org.au/hatties-2017-updated-list/] And those strategies focusing on helping learners to identify how they’re progressing in relation to a specific goal are most effective of all. Feedback is powerful when it reduces the gap between what the student currently understands and the level of understanding they are aiming for. This means that, to work, feedback should be specific to each student and recognize their individual needs and abilities.

Here at Wext, we take these principles to heart. We’ve built our whole approach on the importance of personalized feedback. We know how hard this is to do in the classroom – with high numbers of students and not enough time – so we’ve built our platform using the latest artificial intelligence that can adapt to each student. Individual behaviours, learning styles, and levels of understanding all feed into the approach, creating responses that are unique to each student. By automating the process, we’re able to give each learner timely, relevant, constructive and objective feedback that responds to their specific learning needs.

Why our approach works

We’ve drawn on educational research to ensure that our approach to feedback help students to achieve their learning goals. Our feedback is:

• Focused on the goals of each learner, helping them to close the gap between their current levels of understanding and what they hope to achieve.
• Specific and personalized for each learner, taking into account their particular learning styles and preferences.
• Constructive, encouraging learners to continue and to improve.
• Actionable and provided in manageable chunks, so learners are able to put the feedback into practice.
• Promotes active learning and deeper engagement, by helping students to assess their own progress.
• Timely and ongoing. Feedback is provided as each learner moves through the learning modules, giving instantaneous responses as and when it is needed.
• Simple, clear, and relevant, so that learners can understand it easily and put it into practice.
• Elaborated, so that it does much more than just pointing towards the correct answer. Instead, it provides additional information, including appropriate learning materials, further explanations and examples, and suggestions about how to improve.

Our feedback is formative and aims to perform a corrective function. This means that, for all elements of language learning, our system:

1. First verifies whether the answer is right or wrong,
2. Provides information to the learner about the correct response.

Wext feedback is:
Directive

• It provides additional explanations.
• It addresses the topic.
• It addresses the response.
• It discusses the errors in the response.

Facilitative

• It provides prompts, hints, or cues to assist the learner in determining the correct response.
• It directs and encourages the learner to keep trying until they reach a correct answer.

Ultimately our approach in intelligent computer assisted english learning aims to equip learners with the skills they need to notice different language features and to support them to move from accuracy to fluency.