An analysis of 9,000 U.S. educators using SchoolAI shows that the more they use the platform, the more they gravitate toward teacher-facing features that support tasks like lesson planning and grading.
Teachers who use artificial intelligence tools regularly tend to focus more on teacher-facing productivity features and less on student-facing chatbots, Stanford University researchers found.
As AI use in education grows more popular, there is a strong desire among some education leaders and researchers to understand what that usage looks like. A recent Gallup poll, for example, found that 6 in 10 teachers reported using AI for their work. Rather than relying on self-reported data to answer this question, the Stanford study is based on usage logs from the AI platform SchoolAI.
“We all know that humans are flawed at reporting our own behavior accurately,” Chris Agnew, director of Stanford’s Generative AI for Education Hub, who worked on the project, said.
The analysis tracked 9,000 U.S. teachers who first joined SchoolAI between Aug. 1 and Sept. 15, 2024, and collected data on their usage for 90 days. In that time, not all teachers used AI continuously. According to a report released this month, 16 percent used the platform only once, 43 percent were short-term users and 41 percent became regular users, logging in between eight and 49 days out of the total 90. Only 1 percent, the “power users,” logged into the platform on 50 or more days.
Agnew said that over 40 percent of participants becoming regular or power users is slightly higher than typical software adoption rates. According to software experience management platform Pendo, software keeps about 30 percent of its users after three months.
The findings suggest teachers are using AI on an as-needed basis rather than incorporating it into daily or weekly workflows. In any given week, about a third of participants used the platform. The lack of a sharp drop-off or spike shows variation in who used the platform from week to week.
