But unless teachers understand prompting they are likely to not get the best from AI and offer negative feedback, so this could backfire spectacularly. I’d like to know more about how teachers are going to be trained to use AI effectively.


Macmillan Education, a part of Springer Nature, has launched an AI tool called the Macmillan AI Assistant (MAIA) to help teachers find suitable courses from its platform.

Developed using feedback from 3,000 teacher interactions, MAIA aims to streamline the process of course selection by matching teachers’ needs with the right courses. The tool will be rolled out globally, starting with Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Poland, and Spain, and can interact with teachers in multiple languages.

Jeremy Dieguez, Managing Director of Global Language Learning at Macmillan Education, emphasised that MAIA demonstrates the company’s commitment to innovative solutions that enhance teaching and learning worldwide and added that the positive initial reactions to MAIA have been encouraging.

Personalised Recommendations: MAIA uses a series of questions to understand the specific needs of each teacher, such as the country they are based in, the number of hours of English instruction per week, the importance of exam success, the amount of project work, the age of students, and current materials being used.

This personalised approach ensures that teachers receive tailored course recommendations.

In other words, teachers need to learn to prompt to get the best out of AI, just like the rest of us!

AI-Guided Tours: As a teacher myself, I love the potential here. Once a course is recommended, MAIA provides an AI-guided tour of the product, helping teachers understand how it fits their classroom needs.

Continuous Improvement: MAIA is supposedly continuously improved based on ongoing feedback from teachers, ensuring that it remains relevant and effective.

Well, that’s the theory. But unless teachers understand prompting they are likely to not get the best from AI and offer negative feedback, so this could backfire spectacularly. I’d like to know more about how teachers are going to be trained to use AI effectively.

Macmillan is keen to stress that while MAIA offers a faster way to find the right course, it is designed to supplement, not replace, the personalised engagement teachers expect from Macmillan Education’s team of education and academic consultants.

Call me cynical, but somehow I doubt that was top priority, and likely we’ll see jobs go as this develops.

But hey, that’s the real world. Those who still write with a quill or bash away on a Remington, or send their submissions to agents by post, or who aren’t reading this at all, because they don’t have the internet, can go picket the Macmillan offices for an hour and pretend they really care.

And the team of education consultants might want to learn more about how AI can bring in alternative revenue streams for them.

Read more.

This post first appeared in the TNPS LinkedIn newsfeed.