Today, Smarter Balanced announced a new initiative to develop measurement-focused principles and guidelines for the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in educational assessments. With experience creating scalable, trustworthy AI strategies, IBM Consulting will collaborate with Smarter Balanced to build a foundational AI framework that can help accelerate enhancements in accessibility, accuracy, and fairness while minimizing bias.
As part of the initiative, Smarter Balanced and IBM Consulting will create a multi-disciplinary advisory panel to develop guiding principles for embedding accuracy and fairness into the use of AI for educational measurement and learning resources. Phaedra Boinodiris, Global Leader for Trustworthy AI for IBM Consulting, and Tony Alpert, Executive Director of Smarter Balanced, will serve as advisors on the panel.
“Building trust in AI requires a holistic approach that spans people, process and technology,” said Boinodiris. “We’re proud to support Smarter Balanced’s efforts to create a responsible AI strategy and to help set the standard for the responsible use of AI in educational measurement.”
IBM Consulting and Smarter Balanced will also design a proof-of-concept (POC) that can use generative AI and other models to make language translations in mathematics assessments more efficient and help to improve quality. The goal is to explore how generative AI and other models can help enhance the accessibility of Smarter Balanced’s mathematics assessment and demonstrate the application of responsible AI within educational measurement. The POC aims to bolster the cutting-edge accessibility resources offered to Smarter Balanced’s members and the students they serve.
“As a public agency entrusted by our members to provide accurate and accessible assessments, we sought out IBM Consulting as a leader in the responsible application of AI,” said Alpert. “Not only will our collaboration help enhance the tools and resources that we provide that improve teaching and learning, we will lay the groundwork for a more robust technology infrastructure that can serve as a signpost for using AI responsibly to support educational measurement.”
IBM Consulting helps accelerate business transformation for its clients through hybrid cloud and AI technologies, leveraging its open ecosystem of partners. With deep industry expertise spanning strategy, experience design, technology, and operations, IBM Consulting has become the trusted partner to many of the world's most innovative and valuable companies, helping modernize and protect their most complex systems. Its 160,000 consultants embrace an open way of working and apply its proven, collaborative engagement model, IBM Garage, to scale ideas into outcomes.
About Smarter Balanced
Smarter Balanced is a member-led public agency providing the most comprehensive and innovative standards-aligned assessment system to support educators as they help students on a path to successful learning. Our dynamic system of educational tools—developed in collaboration with our members and educators—provides teachers with integrated lessons, activities, and methods to identify learning opportunities and provide solutions to increase student progress. www.smarterbalanced.org
