How Sparx uses AI tools

Sparx's use of AI tooling

Sparx Learning is using Artificial Intelligence tool providers as part of our support companies that help us deliver our service to you. The use of these tools have fully GDPR-compliant data-sharing contracts in place and have had extensive privacy and security evaluations, they are very safe. At present, we are using them for 3 main activities:

Categorising teacher support tickets

We use AI tooling to provide a summary of help support tickets and categorise them for analysis e.g. related to log-in or a set-up query. This concerns teacher emails only, students cannot raise support tickets.

• Data is shared through a secure, gated application programming interface or API.
• Sparx Learning data is prohibited for use in the training of any 3rd party AI models.
• During project testing, the outputs from the API were repeatedly evaluated to ensure that it gave accurate responses, checking for misleading or biased information.
• It has significantly improved our customer support efficiency and prioritisation. No decisions are made solely on the output, ticket summaries and categorisations are always reviewed by the Sparx staff member dealing with the query.

Using AI to mark written answers in Sparx Science

In Sparx Science, we automatically mark free-form written answers and provide immediate feedback to students. No student personal data is shared, only the question answer and mark scheme for that question.

• Large language models (LLMs) have a nuanced understanding of language and so we are able to award marks even when the student has phrased their answer differently, included other irrelevant information or made spelling mistakes. Many online platforms bypass this by using more constrained question types (e.g. multiple choice). The benefits of our approach are:
• Students are prompted to retrieve the information from memory (an effective learning strategy) instead of selecting the correct answer from a list of options
• Students improve their writing skills.

In context definitions in Sparx Reader

In Sparx Reader, students can select a word they do not understand to request its definition. We use AI tooling to interpret the sentence enabling us to deliver the specific definition of the word in context, enhancing the understanding of the reader. No student data is shared.