GUEST PODCAST: EdTechnical Series 5 Episode 7
Authors
This season EdTech founder Libby Hills and AI researcher Owen Henkel continue to speak with leading researchers, practitioners and educators on the EdTechnical podcast series about the cutting edge of AI in education. They will break down complex AI concepts into non-technical insights to better understand what the research says and help educators sift the useful insights from the AI hype.
In this episode of EdTechnical, our podcast hosts Libby and Owen welcome back John Roberts, CEO and co-founder of Oak National Academy, to discuss the results of a new randomised controlled trial of Aila, Oak’s AI lesson assistant. Funded by the Education Endowment Foundation and independently evaluated by the National Foundation for Educational Research, the trial followed 464 primary teachers across 108 schools in England through a term of everyday lesson planning. It asked a simple question: can Aila save teachers time without any loss in the quality of the resources they produce?
Teachers using Aila saved an average of 49 minutes a week, with no difference in the quality of their resources. The entire saving came from just 7% of lessons. This points to a narrow but valuable use case of Aila in planning lessons from scratch, a task that is especially time consuming for early career teachers. John reflects on what this means for Oak’s product strategy and why rigorous evidence struggles to keep pace with the technology it measures. What’s the right balance between saving teachers time and supporting their professional development?
“Planning a lesson from scratch is really time-consuming, and particularly for early career teachers or those teachers that are new to the profession, it’s saving them a lot of time.”
John Roberts on Aila
Bio
John Roberts is co-founder of Oak National Academy, the UK government-backed provider of free, open licence teaching resources. He previously led the product and engineering team behind Aila, the UK’s first publicly funded generative AI tool for public use, built to support teachers with lesson planning. Before Oak, John worked as a teacher and senior leader in the North West of England and set up companies and charities, including Teach Your Monster. He is now Oak’s Interim Chief Executive.
Links
Project page and evaluation report by the Education Endowment Foundation: Lesson planning using AI lesson assistant, Aila – Teacher Choices trial
Oak National Academy’s blog on the trial results
Try Aila
Authors