BENGALURU: Generally, teachers in government schools or private institutions spend hours planning their classes and activities for different grades. They have to also teach a class of anywhere between 50-70 children with different abilities. To help teachers develop personalized learning experiences for students and to save time spent on planning lessons, Microsoft Research in India has partnered with the Shikshana Foundation to build an AI-powered digital assistant centered around the teachers’ specific needs.
The Shikshan Copilot is the assistant that uses advanced generative AI models, integrating multiple content formats like text, images, videos, charts, and other interactive elements. The assistant is currently being run in 10 government schools around Bengaluru in both, Kannada and English, and will be made accessible across Karnataka. It supports connectivity to both public and private resource content. The assistant can be accessed through WhatsApp, Telegram, and web applications, making it simpler to use.
Sharing her experience, Parimala HV who teaches science for grades 6 to 8 in Kannada at Government Higher Primary School, Santhe Beedhi in Devanahalli, said that for each class, she had to spend an hour or more each day, to prepare a lesson plan.
“Even searching the internet for ideas was overwhelming. The new tool is very useful for new teachers. I think it could revolutionize the way teachers teach.”
Gireesh KS, another teacher who teaches in a school near Devanahalli said, that with a digital assistant, he could make PowerPoint within minutes to create an interactive atmosphere for the students. The Microsoft team developed the assistant using generative AI models such as Large Language Models (LLMs).
“This grounding is enabled by ingesting relevant data with the help of state-of-the-art optical character recognition, computer vision, and generative AI models. It was also important to use natural language and voice-based interactions including English and Kannada,” said Akshay Nambi, Principal Researcher, at Microsoft Research.