AI lets teachers at this int’l school teach more, do less admin

EtonHouse’s AI planner, Lumina, has helped reduce 90% of its teachers’ administrative workload. / Photo credit: EtonHouse

Education provider EtonHouse is a finalist of the inaugural Design AI and Tech Awards, which spotlights innovations by startups, enterprises, and corporations in Singapore.

EtonHouse International Education Group is harnessing generative AI to empower its teachers to teach more and do less administrative work.

Lumina, the company’s AI planner for its educators, uses OpenAI’s application programming interface to help with curriculum planning and creating new lessons.

The inspiration for Lumina came from interviews with educators, who expressed their struggles in balancing student engagement and meeting learning targets while they themselves are overwhelmed by their workload.

Compounding the burden was the need to enter data for lesson planning into Microsoft Excel sheets with no central repository, which often led to multiple versions and confusion.

Privacy and data protection were designed into Lumina, which does not collect or submit any personally identifiable information.

In prototyping Lumina, the system was tested at selected EtonHouse centers, and feedback was gathered through surveys and interviews. The user interface was tweaked to make it more intuitive for teachers, including adding accessibility features and an analytical chatbot.

After going through a number of iterations, Lumina now has a real-time tracking feature for learning objectives and multilingual support. With this tool, teachers are empowered rather than replaced.

Lumina also eliminates inconsistencies from siloed systems, as it uses standardized learning outcomes for the students.

The AI planner was developed with feedback from teachers. / Photo credit: EtonHouse

Powerful yet simple to use

Lumina was modeled to resemble traditional lesson planners so the layout and workflow would be familiar to teachers. This has helped with easing educators into adopting the system.

The interface is also clean and simple, with features such as dropdown menus, checkboxes, and tables to make it straightforward for educators to navigate.

Job satisfaction