5 Free AI Tools to Enhance Student Engagement in the Classroom

This article outlines five artificial intelligence (AI) tools freely available for educators seeking to improve student engagement in classroom settings. The incorporation of AI in education presents opportunities to personalize learning experiences, streamline administrative tasks, and provide students with dynamic, interactive content. Understanding the functionalities of these tools is crucial for their effective integration into pedagogical practices.

Interactive quizzing platforms leverage AI to create dynamic and adaptive assessment experiences. These tools move beyond static multiple-choice questions, offering educators the ability to design quizzes that provide immediate feedback and can even adjust difficulty based on student performance.

Kahoot!

Kahoot! is a game-based learning platform. It allows educators to create multiple-choice quizzes, surveys, and discussions that students answer in real-time, typically using their own devices such as smartphones or tablets. The platform’s gamified approach, which includes points, leaderboards, and music, is designed to stimulate competition and participation.

Quiz Creation: Educators can craft quizzes from scratch, inputting their own questions and answer options. The platform supports various question types, including multiple-choice and true/false. Time limits can be set for each question, influencing the pace of the activity.
Live Games: Kahoot! is primarily used for live, synchronous sessions. The educator projects the quiz questions onto a main screen, while students submit their answers individually via their devices. Results are displayed in real-time, often showcasing the top-performing students. This instant gratification acts as a mechanism for engagement.
Self-Paced Challenges: In addition to live games, Kahoot! offers “challenges” that students can complete asynchronously. This feature allows for flexible learning, enabling students to review material at their own pace outside of the classroom. Performance data from these challenges can be reviewed by the educator.
Reporting and Analytics: After a Kahoot! session, educators can access reports detailing student performance. These reports provide insights into which questions were challenging for the class and which students demonstrated mastery. This data can inform future instructional decisions, highlighting areas where further teaching or review may be necessary.

Quizziz

Quizziz is another platform for creating interactive quizzes and lessons. Similar to Kahoot!, it gamifies the assessment process. However, Quizziz offers a more independent experience for students, as questions and answer options appear on their individual screens, rather than solely on a projector.

Personalized Learning: A key distinction of Quizziz is its adaptive nature. Questions are displayed on individual student devices, enabling students to progress at their own pace. This differs from a shared screen approach, which can sometimes leave slower learners behind.
Question Types: Quizziz supports a broader range of question types compared to some contemporaries, including multiple choice, fill-in-the-blank, open-ended, and poll questions. This versatility allows for more nuanced assessment design.
Presentation Mode: Beyond quizzes, Quizziz includes a “presentations” feature, allowing educators to embed questions directly into slides. This integrates assessment within the instructional delivery, maintaining a continuous feedback loop.
Homework Assignments: Quizziz can be used to set homework assignments, which students complete at their leisure. The platform tracks progress and performance, providing educators with data on student comprehension outside of live classroom sessions.
Memes and Power-ups: To maintain engagement, Quizziz incorporates humorous memes between questions and offers “power-ups” that students can use during quizzes, adding a strategic element to the game.

AI-Powered Content Generation and Curation

AI tools can assist educators in generating and curating educational content, reducing the time spent on lesson preparation and providing diverse learning materials. These tools act as a literary assistant, offering a starting point for pedagogical resources.

ChatGPT (or similar large language models)

ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, is a large language model capable of generating human-like text based on prompts. While not specifically designed for education, its versatility makes it a valuable resource for educators to create content, brainstorm ideas, and even design lesson plans.

Lesson Plan Drafting: Educators can prompt ChatGPT to generate initial drafts of lesson plans, including learning objectives, activities, and assessment ideas. This can serve as a foundational structure upon which to build a complete lesson.
Question Generation: For any subject, ChatGPT can create a variety of questions, ranging from basic recall to higher-order thinking prompts. This can populate quizzes, discussion prompts, or study guides, offering a diverse array of assessment items.
Topic Summaries and Explanations: When introducing new concepts, educators can use ChatGPT to generate concise summaries or simplified explanations of complex topics. This can assist in differentiating instruction for students who require varied explanations.
Creative Writing Prompts: To stimulate creative thinking, ChatGPT can generate imaginative writing prompts tailored to specific genres, themes, or historical periods. This can be a catalyst for student literary endeavors.
Differentiation Support: ChatGPT can aid in differentiating instruction by rephrasing content at different reading levels or by generating additional examples to support student understanding. This allows educators to cater to a wider range of learning needs.

Perplexity AI

Perplexity AI functions as an answer engine that provides concise summaries and citations for its responses. Unlike standard search engines, it aims to deliver direct answers derived from multiple sources, making it a valuable tool for research and factual content verification.

Research Assistance: For both educators and students, Perplexity AI can quickly synthesize information from various online sources on a given topic. Its ability to provide direct answers with source attribution streamlines the research process.
Resource Discovery: Beyond answering specific questions, Perplexity AI can suggest related queries or topics, acting as a discovery engine for expanding knowledge in a subject area. This can be useful for students exploring a topic beyond the curriculum.
Fact-Checking (with caution): While presenting information from various sources, Perplexity AI can be used as an initial tool for fact-checking. However, users should always verify critical information with primary sources due to the generative nature of AI.
Content Generation for Specific Topics: Educators can use Perplexity AI to gather information for creating lectures, presentations, or handouts on specific topics. The curated nature of its responses can save time in assembling relevant data.
Student Inquiry Support: When students have questions about a topic, Perplexity AI can provide instant, sourced answers. This encourages independent learning and curiosity, providing a rapid information retrieval mechanism.

Tools for Interactive Presentations and Whiteboards

Interactive presentation tools, amplified by AI, transform passive viewing into active participation. These platforms enable dynamic content delivery, collaborative whiteboarding, and real-time interaction, drawing students into the learning process.

Miro

Miro is an online collaborative whiteboard platform. It provides a visual workspace where users can brainstorm, organize ideas, create diagrams, and conduct real-time collaborative tasks. While not exclusively AI-powered, its features can be enhanced with AI integrations and its digital canvas facilitates dynamic classroom activities.

Collaborative Brainstorming: Miro offers a virtual space for students to brainstorm ideas together, regardless of their physical location. This promotes collaborative learning and allows for a shared understanding of evolving concepts.
Visual Organization: Students can use Miro to create mind maps, flowcharts, and concept maps, visually organizing complex information. This aids in understanding relationships between ideas and structuring knowledge.
Project Work and Group Activities: For group projects, Miro serves as a central hub where students can work together on tasks, share resources, and track progress. It acts as a digital planning board, similar to a project manager’s task board.
Interactive Presentations: Educators can use Miro to deliver dynamic presentations, where slides are not static but interactive canvases. Students can add notes, ask questions directly on the board, or participate in polls embedded within the presentation.
Templates for Learning: Miro provides a vast library of templates, including SWOT analyses, Kanban boards, and lesson plan outlines, that can be adapted for educational purposes, helping students structure their thinking and work.

AI-Enhanced Feedback and Assessment

Providing timely and constructive feedback is a cornerstone of effective teaching. AI tools can assist in automating certain aspects of feedback and assessment, allowing educators to focus on qualitative, personalized guidance.

Gradescope (with limitations on free tier)

Gradescope is designed to streamline the grading process for assignments, particularly for handwritten work and programming projects. While the most robust features are part of a paid subscription, its free tier offers some utility for educators.

Rubric-Based Grading: Gradescope enables educators to create and apply detailed rubrics to assignments. This ensures consistent grading and provides clear feedback to students on specific criteria.
Efficient Handwritten Work Grading: The platform digitizes handwritten submissions, allowing educators to grade them online. This system enables rapid evaluation and consistent feedback, bridging the gap between paper-based assignments and digital assessment.
Targeted Feedback: Educators can provide specific, localized feedback directly on submitted work. This allows for precise comments on student errors or areas for improvement.
Data Analytics on Performance: Gradescope provides analytics on student performance across different questions or rubric items. This data can highlight common misconceptions or areas where the class as a whole is struggling, informing future instruction.
Consistent Grading Across Multiple Graders: When multiple teaching assistants or educators are grading the same assignment, Gradescope helps maintain consistency by centralizing the rubric and feedback process. It acts as a calibration instrument for grading.

Accessibility and Inclusivity Tools

AI Tool	Primary Function	Key Features	Student Engagement Metric	Platform Compatibility
Edpuzzle	Interactive Video Lessons	Video embedding, quizzes, analytics	+30% video completion rate	Web, iOS, Android
Kahoot!	Game-based Learning	Quizzes, polls, real-time feedback	+40% participation in quizzes	Web, iOS, Android
Quizlet	Flashcards & Study Sets	Custom flashcards, games, study modes	+25% retention rate	Web, iOS, Android
Nearpod	Interactive Lessons & Assessments	Polls, quizzes, VR experiences	+35% student interaction	Web, iOS, Android
Mentimeter	Live Polling & Q&A	Polls, quizzes, word clouds	+50% real-time responses	Web, iOS

AI can play a significant role in making educational content more accessible and inclusive for all students, including those with diverse learning needs or physical disabilities. These tools act as a universal translator, adapting content to learner requirements.

Google Live Caption (and other browser-based captioning)

Google Live Caption is a feature available in popular web browsers like Chrome that automatically generates real-time captions for audio playing in the browser. This tool significantly enhances accessibility for various educational contexts.

Real-time Captioning of Videos: When playing educational videos or lectures from platforms like YouTube or recorded class sessions, Live Caption provides immediate textual representation of the spoken content. This is invaluable for students with hearing impairments or those learning in noisy environments.
Support for Language Learners: For students learning English as an additional language, Live Caption can provide a textual aid to comprehension. Visual text alongside auditory input can reinforce vocabulary and grammar.
Note-Taking Assistance: Students can use captions as a supplementary tool for note-taking, quickly identifying key phrases or concepts that are spoken aloud without having to pause and rewind. This acts as a real-time transcription service.
Content Review for Educators: Educators can use Live Caption to review their own spoken content in recordings, ensuring clarity and identifying any areas where their speech might be ambiguous or rapid.
Accessibility for Diverse Learning Styles: Some students are auditory learners, while others are visual. Live Caption provides both, catering to different learning preferences and ensuring that information is conveyed through multiple modalities.

Conclusion

The integration of free AI tools into classroom practices offers educators opportunities to augment traditional teaching methods. These platforms facilitate interactive engagement through gamified quizzes, streamline content creation processes, foster collaborative learning environments, assist in providing targeted feedback, and enhance accessibility. While AI is not a panacea for all educational challenges, its judicious application can serve as a force multiplier for educators, empowering them to cultivate a more dynamic and inclusive learning experience for students. By understanding the specific functionalities and limitations of each tool, educators can strategically deploy AI to achieve their pedagogical objectives, turning the abstract into the tangible for their students. Like a skilled navigator using a compass to chart a course, educators can leverage these AI tools to guide their students toward deeper understanding and active participation.