AI tool gives teachers in India ready-made lesson plans in their own language

An AI system called Shiksha Copilot is helping teachers in under-resourced schools in southern India prepare lessons in English and the local language, Kannada, Cornell University reported. In an evaluation with more than 1,000 teachers in Karnataka state, teachers said it saved them about two hours a week.

Lessons use local examples, checked by experienced teachers

The tool, developed by Microsoft Research India and named after the Sanskrit word for learning, turns textbook material into lesson plans for grades five to ten. Guardrails keep examples culturally relevant, such as dosas instead of pizza, and experienced teachers review the plans before classroom teachers adapt them.

Quality was high in English: of 7,744 plans, curators slightly adjusted 3.53% and rejected 0.34%. The Kannada versions needed more work, with 96% changed, often over word choice, though teachers still rated almost 81% of them "very good".

“Usually, whenever someone comes with something new, it just adds to our workload, but this is a burden-releasing concept.” — A science teacher with 20 years of experience

More hands-on lessons, less lecturing

Teachers said the tool eased paperwork and helped them replace lecturing with hands-on activities, such as collecting local leaves to compare their vein patterns. The local nonprofit Sikshana Foundation helped test it in government schools.

Cornell doctoral student Deepak Varuvel Dennison, the study's first author, will present the work at an international computing conference this month, where it received an honourable mention. Digital tools are spreading in classrooms elsewhere too, such as Moldova's new free national learning platform.

30,000 teachers now use it in Telangana

The team is now testing the tool on a larger scale: about 30,000 teachers in the state of Telangana are using it this year. The researchers found that adapting such tools to local languages, curricula and systems can make up as much as 80% of the work of building them.