Empowering young writers with cechat

CEnet's cechat AI solution is being refined through collaborative exploration with Catholic schools across Australia to discover new ways AI can support learning and teaching. The Writing Assistant Stage 3, crafted by Katrina Crews, Middle Leader in the Diocese of Wollongong, is one such agent, notably trialled first with K-6 students at St Clare's Catholic Primary School, Narellan Vale.

The challenge: Developing writing skills across various text types

  • Improving ideas: Students needing help to generate or expand upon their ideas.

  • Correcting punctuation and grammar: Students making errors in punctuation and grammar.

  • Enhancing overall writing quality: A need for students to improve the clarity, conciseness, and descriptive language of their writing.

  • Providing timely and specific feedback: Teachers face the demanding task of providing detailed, individualised feedback to multiple students on these specific aspects of writing.

The cechat solution: Writing Assistant Stage 3 agent

The Writing Assistant Stage 3 agent operates based on a specific prompt, aiming to provide students with between three and five specific suggestions to improve their writing. The agent provides targeted feedback in three key areas:

  • Developing ideas: For narratives, it suggests ways to enhance character development, settings, and plot points. For informative texts, it assists in gathering and organising relevant facts. For persuasive texts, it helps develop strong arguments and supporting evidence. It also provides examples to foster creative and engaging ideas for each text type.

  • Punctuation and grammar: The agenda checks for errors, explains mistakes in a way that is easy for a Stage 3 student to understand, and offers examples of correct punctuation and grammar usage relevant to the text type. It also provides tips on varying sentence structures to make the text more interesting.

  • Improving writing: This includes suggestions for using clear and concise language, appropriate descriptive language (like adjectives, adverbs, similes, and metaphors), effective dialogue for narratives, and connectives to improve the flow of writing, as well as general language features appropriate to the text type.

Impact and benefits

The implementation of the Writing Assistant has shown several significant benefits and impacts for students and the learning process:

  • Personalised and actionable feedback: Students receive tailored suggestions directly relevant to their specific writing, allowing them to focus on areas needing improvement. The feedback is practical, with specific examples and tips.

  • Improved writing quality:The agent’s suggestions led to clear enhancements in writing quality, including richer descriptions, better flow, and improved adherence to writing conventions. 

  • Empowering student self-correction: By providing suggestions rather than simply ‘fixing’ the text, the agent encourages students to think critically about their writing and apply the improvements themselves, fostering deeper learning.

  • Teacher support and efficiency: By automating aspects of feedback, the Writing Assistant has the potential to free up teacher time or provide more detailed feedback than otherwise possible for every student.

  • Alignment with curriculum needs: The agent’s ability to provide suggestions for specific text types (narrative, informative, persuasive) and focus on ideas, punctuation, and grammar directly aligns with core curriculum requirements for Stage 3 students.

The continuous refinement of cechat based on trials like that at St Clare's Catholic Primary School highlights its potential to significantly enhance personalised learning experiences for students, particularly in foundational skills like writing.