College of Education professor builds an AI tool to support teachers and students

Technological innovation continues to reshape education at every level. The rapid growth of AI has expedited the need for tools that will support teachers. Jeremy Riel, an assistant professorin the College of Education, is pursuing that challenge.

Riel received a grant from the Institute of Education Sciences - the research arm of the U.S. Department of Education - to lead a new effort to transform how teachers support student learning using AI, without replacing the human expertise at the heart of teaching. Riel is the director of the Teaching and Research with AI Learning (TRAILblazer) Lab at UIC.

The project is funded through the Seedlings to Scale program, part of a federal initiative to fund early-stage, rapidly developed innovations in education.

A new tool for feedback

Riel is developing SkillTree, a prototype AI-enabled platform designed to help teachers give timely feedback to students. He describes SkillTree as a tool that helps students understand exactly what skills they need to succeed in a course. It organizes those skills visually, starting with the basics and branching into more advanced abilities. It's similar to the skill trees students might recognize from video games.

Students can see a personalized report showing what they already know and can do, and what they still need to work on. Teachers, in turn, get an easy-to-read view of how students are progressing, which helps them tailor their feedback and instruction.

When students submit an assignment, such as a coding exercise for a computer science class, the system uses AI to check whether the work demonstrates certain skills. It then sends the teacher a simple report summarizing what skills AI detected, allowing a teacher to make final decisions about student learning.

"The AI doesn't do any grading," Riel said. "It's just providing teachers with an extra source of information … so the teacher can instead spend time working directly with students." 

"The ways Jeremy Riel is applying AI to enhance teachers' feedback have the potential to personalize learning, support more equitable outcomes for students and ensure teachers have the time they need to spend with students," College of Education Dean Kathryn Chval said. "His research is innovative and on target with how AI can be used in a positive way."

Building responsible, transparent AI

Riel is committed to ethical and transparent AI development. Large language models are often referred to as "black boxes" because it's difficult to see how they arrive at their outputs. SkillTree addresses this by connecting the AI's evaluations directly to the visual SkillTree structure, enabling teachers and researchers to verify the system's reasoning.

"We want to find ways to make sure it's translatable to us, to verify that an AI is actually doing the work it sets out to do and that any student evaluation is happening in alignment with well-established frameworks and standards," Riel said. "With SkillTree, we're trying to open the box a little bit to validate the AI's thinking process."

SkillTree is also designed to ensure all data stays secure at UIC. Student information never leaves the university's custody, reducing concerns about data privacy and security in the age of AI.

A fast-paced new federal model

Seedlings to Scale is part of the Institute of Education Sciences' new Accelerate, Transform, Scale initiative, which aims to speed up educational research and development. Traditional federal education grants often span two to five years; Seedlings to Scale compresses early-stage prototyping into 12 months.

The goal is to surface promising innovations quickly and provide a pathway to larger phase-two funding for those that demonstrate strong potential and audience alignment. Riel's phase-one award runs through September.

If SkillTree receives further funding, Riel plans to expand beyond computer science into other subjects, potentially mathematics and language arts. Ultimately, Riel hopes the tool will contribute to better learning outcomes and a healthier classroom environment.

"Our biggest impact goal is freeing up time for teachers to work more one-on-one with students," he said. "We also want to help students track their progress, plan their goals and learn better as a result of using our tool."