U.S. math students still aren't making the grade on the world's stage, but a team of researchers backed by the National Science Foundation is putting AI to the test for improving the teaching of the subject in public schools.
Teachers in two Colorado school districts in the spring started pilot tests with AI for analyzing math class discussions. Participating teachers helped with the design of the program as well as testing.
The goal is to improve engagement in math classes by analyzing teachers' use of discussion techniques and students' responses, and providing the instructors feedback for follow-up.
The program is already showing promising signs, with teachers saying it offers useful insights.
I'm always trying to improve conversations that happen in my math lessons and to help students have discussions with each other to explain their thinking. The application lets me see how I'm doing at meeting that goal, said Kristin Holmquist, a fifth grade teacher in the pilot tests at Eagleview Elementary School.
Accelerating STEM Education The U.S. remains an underperformer globally for math education. Its math students rank 31st in the world, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Legislators, universities, companies and influencers alike are supporting STEM - science, technology, engineering and math - education.
University of Colorado Boulder researchers developed the classroom application, dubbed Talk Moves, using natural language processing models run on NVIDIA GPUs. Talk Moves taps speech recognition to automatically generate classroom transcripts and natural language processing models to analyze the text for discussion insights. The app provides teachers feedback on their use of specific discourse techniques known in math education circles as talk moves.
There's a big push to have teachers think deeply about their discourse practices and the conversations they have in math classes with students, said Jennifer Jacobs, an associate research professor at the university's Institute of Cognitive Science.
Teaching NLP on GPUs The researchers gathered more than 500 written transcripts of K-12 math lessons to train the Talk Moves system. The transcripts were annotated for six different types of talk moves used in sentences, totalling more than 200,000 sentences for the training dataset. Annotating the dataset was handled by two talk moves language specialists for two years.
The university researchers fine-tuned the Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) natural language processing model on the Talk Moves dataset. They preprocessed the data on local NVIDIA GPUs and then trained the model on cloud instances of NVIDIA GPUs.
The parallel processing capabilities and Tensor Core architecture of NVIDIA GPUs enable higher throughput and scalability for working with complex language models - offering record-setting performance for both the training and inference of BERT.
Training their hefty BERT-based model on NVIDIA GPUs enabled quicker iterations of the app, said Abhijit Suresh, a graduate research assistant in the institute.
We use the GPU parallelization to make sure we can train the model much faster - it's much faster than running it on CPUs, said Suresh.
The resulting Talk Moves classifier model is used to predict the label for which discussion technique, or talk move, is applied in class.
AI for Student Equity The effort comes amid a bipartisan legislative proposal in the U.S. Senate to modernize math teaching in the nation's public schools.
Research on how to integrate AI in the classroom to best support teachers and students is now being extended as part of a $20 million research collaboration led by the University of Colorado and backed by the NSF, intended to boost STEM learning opportunities for students from historically underrepresented populations.
Talk Moves aims to broaden and deepen classroom math conversations, supporting student equity, said Jacobs. The Talk Moves app has a series of NVIDIA GPU-driven classifiers that can measure how often students, and which students, are responding in discussions.
A big goal of accountable talk is equity, because we want all students listening, participating, talking and being a part of that community, she said.
The research team - Abhijit Suresh, Jennifer Jacobs, Vivian Lai, Chenhao Tan, Karla Scornavacco, Wayne Ward, James Martin and Tamara Sumner - recently submitted a paper on their work.
NVIDIA NGC enables remote training of BERT models.
Photo courtesy of NeONBRAND on Unsplash.
Most recent headlines
11/12/2025
Dalet, a leading provider of cloud-native, end-to-end media workflow solutions, ...
06/12/2025
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. A new survey from Pixitmedia by Datacore revealed a major shift in the Media & Entertainment industry in media archiving, with 85% of resp...
06/12/2025
HACKENSACK, N.J. LiveU has announced that the national public broadcaster Czech Television has completed one of the largest LiveU live production deployments fo...
06/12/2025
NEW YORK The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) presented the Excellence in Production Technology Emmy Award to NASA+ and Dr. Tom Leight...
05/12/2025
2025 Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame: Curt Gowdy Jr. - Master Storyteller, Nati...
05/12/2025
SVG Sit-Down: Veritone's Sean King on the Power of Mining Video, Audio DataThe company's Data Refinery offers users total control and governance over da...
05/12/2025
Platinum White Paper: Inside the Nashville Predators' Unified, Flexible, Sca...
05/12/2025
Netflix Reaches Agreement To Acquire Warner Bros. Following Planned WBD SplitThe deal does not include WBDs sports assets like TNT Sports (US, UK, LatAm), Euros...
05/12/2025
FOX Sports Returns to Indianapolis for Primetime Broadcast of Big Ten Championsh...
05/12/2025
SVG Summit 2025 Preview: Digital Engagement & Monetization Workshop Tackles the ...
05/12/2025
Atlanta United Lights Up New Emory Healthcare Studio With First Live Broadcast f...
05/12/2025
As Messi Takes the Pitch, MLS, Apple, NEP Roll Out Largest MLS Cup Production Ev...
05/12/2025
ESPN Enters College Football's Most Intense Month With Elevated Workflows fo...
05/12/2025
It's about that time! Awards season is in full swing, and the Film Independe...
05/12/2025
Every year, Spotify Wrapped offers a personalized look back at the audio that defined your year. It's a snapshot of your listening habits, designed to tell ...
05/12/2025
In 2025, Spotify's EQUAL, GLOW, and RADAR programs celebrated women, LGBTQIA , and emerging artists who turned moments into milestones. From breaking record...
05/12/2025
In our latest blog, we explain how Wi-Fi 7 rollouts can drive consumer loyalty with value-add services such as consumer cybersecurity. We also explore how this ...
05/12/2025
LOS ANGELES Netflix announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire the assets of Warner Bros. for $82.7 billion....
05/12/2025
NEW YORK Nielsens Gracenote has launched Gracenote Content Connect, a new ad platform that provides agencies, brands, supply-side platforms (SSPs) and demand-si...
05/12/2025
NEW YORK In an most important update to the workings of deal-based programmatic advertising, IAB Tech Lab has released version 1.0 of its Deals API for public c...
05/12/2025
NEW YORK Pass the turkey. Pass the stuffing. Pass the cranberry sauce. All are common requests of Americans celebrating Thanksgiving Day with family and f...
05/12/2025
NEW YORK Iris, the new cloud-connected camera control platform, has officially launched with features that turn virtually any PTZ camera into a software-connect...
05/12/2025
HOLLYWOOD, Calif. Netflix announced today that it has entered into an agreement to acquire the assets of Warner Bros. for $82.7 billion....
05/12/2025
NEW YORK Iris, the new cloud-connected camera control platform, has officially launched with features that turn virtually any PTZ camera into a software-connect...
05/12/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has approved AT&T's $1.02 billion acquisition of spectrum from UScellular in a decision that was issued sho...
05/12/2025
The Best Coldplay Songs: 21 Tracks That Shoot for the Stars From Yellow to Viva La Vida, Fix You to Paradise, this playlist goes back to the start.
December ...
05/12/2025
Zafris Lecture Series Brings Nabil Ayers to Berklee The 32nd annual James G. Zafris Distinguished Lecture series was held on Thursday, November 13, with guest...
05/12/2025
Friday 5 December 2025
A new Game of Thrones Tale: Official trailer for Sky Exc...
05/12/2025
Back to All News
Don Lee, Lee Jin-uk, and Lalisa Manobal to Star in Netflix Act...
05/12/2025
Tis the season of giving once again and this year we've taken our Give Back Fridays' concept and turned it on its head.
In the autumn we were approach...
05/12/2025
Brayden Gogis doesn't remember a time when he wasn't completely fixated on games in all forms. In preschool, when they asked us to dress up as what we ...
05/12/2025
The Grinch steals the spotlight as the theme for The Late Late Toy Show 2025
Tune in tonight at 9:35pm on RT One and worldwide on RT Player
#LateLateToyShow...
05/12/2025
RT Announces New Presenters of Flagship News Programmes
New RT Six One News co-presenter Tommy Meskill
Sarah McInerney & Justin McCarthy join Morning Ir...
04/12/2025
ToolsOnAir Blackmagic Design HyperDeck Event Presets for just:in mac pro 2025 & ...
04/12/2025
ToolsOnAir AJA Ki Pro Event Presets for just:in mac pro 2025 & just:in linux
More Details:Starting with version 5.5, both just:in mac pro and just:in linux sol...
04/12/2025
Wangu Kanuri from Kenya and Godwin Asediba from Ghana are two of this years finalists for Thomsons Young Journalist of the Year Award. The pair are runners-up i...
04/12/2025
SVG Sit-Down: ProximaVision's Claudio Lisman on Why Tethered Drones Could Be...
04/12/2025
SVG Campus Shot Callers: Imry Halevi, Senior Associate Director of Athletics, Co...
04/12/2025
Platinum White Paper: LiveU Lightweight Sports Production: A Step Change in Spor...
04/12/2025
London to Riyadh: DAZN brings the boxing glamour to new production levels for Be...
04/12/2025
Analysis: Paramount bets on the battering ram' with Champions League play By Callum McCarthy, Editor-at-Large
Tuesday, December 2, 2025 - 10:12
Print ...
04/12/2025
Space City Home Network Launches SCHN DTC App for Astros and RocketsThe Rockets and Astros were previously the lone NBA and MLB teams without a DTC appBy Jason...
04/12/2025
SVG Summit 2025 Preview: Content Workflows Workshop Spotlights Evolution of Spor...
04/12/2025
New Sponsor Spotlight: Geotech's Patrick Wambold On the Unreal Engine Revolu...
04/12/2025
Curt Gowdy Jr. - Master Storyteller, Nationally and RegionallyBy Jason Dachman, Editorial Director, U.S.
Thursday, December 4, 2025 - 1:52 pm
Print This Sto...
04/12/2025
(L-R) Rebecca Lichtenfeld, Mohammadreza Eyni, Sara Khaki, and Judith Helfand att...
04/12/2025
SBS launches Future Frames initiative to support emerging First Nations video ed...
04/12/2025
Coronal mass ejections caused by eruptions on the surface of the sun can have fa...
04/12/2025
Gracenote Content Connect enables media ecosystem to precisely align ad campaigns and programming based on rich content signals
NEW YORK - December 4, 2025 - N...
U.S. math students still aren't making the grade on the world's stage, but a team of researchers backed by the National Science Foundation is putting AI to the test for improving the teaching of the subject in public schools.
