Flint's Interactions with Students in Activities

Hello everyone!

In talking with students about Flint today, several told me that when the assignment is to have a discussion with Flint about a topic, students feel Flint is somehow sarcastic or downplaying their answers if they’re having trouble contributing to the discussion. Does anyone have ideas for instructions teachers could give Flint while creating the activity to make its interaction with students more supportive?

Responses

Zachary Widbin

I guess I’d start by reading the transcripts of said students to get a feel for whether this is a case where students have some room to grow in terms of sensitivity to feedback, or whether you think Flint is actually being unnecessarily harsh. In either case, you might choose to write this into the Flint activity settings. Tell it you don’t want your students to feel dismissed by Flint, so it should be extra affirming and supporting when responding to students, especially for students who demonstrate weak responses.

Mica Mulloy

I have seen some cases like this when the context we’ve given an activity has been overly critical—or at least came across as overly critical even if that wasn’t the intent. Even if it wasn’t really sarcastic, students perceived it as overly harsh. For example, if you try to give it some personality and want it to be frank or short and to the point, it will do just that. Or I’ve found that anything with “critique” in it can tend to generate responses that seem to want to primarily identify something for improvement rather than celebrate what’s good. I’ve had luck adding directions into activities that include something like, “Act as a kind, patient, and understanding instructor with a knack for reaching 9th and 10th grade students where they are at, identify what students have done well, offer to explain something in different terms if students struggle, and yet still politely hold them accountable for the expectations and their own effort.” Those are the things we all try to do as teachers, so it makes sense we try to direct the AI to mirror that.

Jacob Edington

Hi all - I love the feedback here! The only thing that I would add as an offer is once you have found the wording that works best for you - consider adding it to the Learning Background and Goals under Group Settings. This will help save time and prevent you from having to add this to every single activity individually.