Bolton College's innovative pilot project that utilises artificial intelligence (AI) in formative assessments demonstrated significant advantages for both students and educators. This trailblazing approach saw the college employ its FirstPass platform, with backing from the Assessment Innovation Fund of NCFE, to conduct the first-of-its-kind research on the use of AI for assisting students answer open-ended questions and also study its effects on teacher workloads.

The results showed a notable impact, with nearly all learners (92.3%) reporting that the feedback from FirstPass helped them improve their answers to open-ended questions. Moreover, 82% of teachers found it to be an effective tool for facilitating formative assessments.

Aftab Hussian, the ILT Manager at Bolton College, explained the double objective of the research: "We wanted to assess the efficacy of training the AI models to support the delivery of open-ended questions, and we wanted to assess if the AI model that underpinned the FirstPass platform could support the students with real-time feedback as they compose freeform text responses to open-ended questions which have been posed by their teachers."

Hussian added that the platform revealed that an AI education formative assessment service could successfully utilize a crowdsourcing model and that simultaneous participation of several teachers and students could facilitate the training of the AI models vital for formative assessment practices. If not for the Assessment Innovation Fund and the NCFE's support, the demonstration of this groundbreaking research would not have been possible.

The FirstPass pilot engaged six colleges, and involved educators and subject specialists across the UK. Working in a coordinated manner, they trained the machine learning models which constituted the foundation for the delivery and evaluation of open-ended questions to students. These models facilitated the provision of instant feedback to the students on their free-form text responses, significantly reducing the feedback wait time.

Despite appreciating the usefulness of open-ended questions in formative assessments, teachers often find the review and feedback process to be time-consuming. FirstPass offers a more detailed, unbiased evaluation of these questions in a considerably shorter time.

Gray Mytton, the Assessment Innovation Manager at NCFE, lauded the FirstPass platform as a superb exemplification of innovation in the FE sector and the evaluated implementation of artificial intelligence in education. He added, saying that they were "proud to be part of the project that opened the platform to other colleges for the first time."

Bolton College will continue working alongside NCFE in a second phase of the project to further develop and test FirstPass. This phase will focus on formative assessment in two specific courses; Level 2 Diploma in Early Year Practitioner and the Technical Award in Child Development and Care at Levels 1 and 2. Notably, the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) will fund the college to conduct a small-scale pilot with 8 to 12 other further education colleges, assessing how FirstPass can support formative assessment practices for GCSE English Language resits.