Intro to Arbor AI for Teachers

This guide introduces the Arbor AI features available to teachers and classroom pastoral assistants within the MIS. It explains the different AI tools you can use, everyday examples to try, and what to do if you do not have access.

Can I use Arbor AI as a Teacher?

Yes, Arbor AI is designed for all staff in your school. Provided you have the right permissions, you can access the full Arbor AI suite or specific features, such as Ask Arbor or Suggest Student Summary.

All schools get a Monthly Free Allowance of AI credits to use across their whole school as they see fit. These allowances are designed not to run out. However, if your school does reach its free limit before the end of the month, there are no hidden costs. 

Why do I not have any AI features yet?

By default, Teachers, Teaching Assistants, Supply Teachers, and Learning Mentors are excluded from accessing your standard Arbor AI features.

If you cannot see the Ask Arbor button or specific AI features mentioned in this guide, but believe you need access to save time in your role, please contact your school's admin team and refer them to this guidance on managing AI permissions.

Which permissions do I need exactly?

To access an AI Feature in Arbor, three things need to be in place:

• You need the School: Arbor AI: View Arbor AI permission assigned to your profile. Without this permission, even if they have been given a feature-specific permission, they still won't be able to use Arbor AI. See how to assign MIS permission here.
• You need to have the right Feature Permission.
• Your school needs to be opted in to Arbor AI and the feature you want to use on the school level through the Global AI Permissions.

What can teachers do with Arbor AI?

Arbor AI is built seamlessly into your MIS to help turn requests into actions. To get the best results, try to keep each prompt or request focused on just one topic. Here are the core features you can use to save time on daily tasks.

Ask Arbor (Classroom and Pastoral Assistants)

The Classroom and Pastoral Assistants provide contextual insights tailored specifically to the class or student group you are currently viewing. These appear directly on the lesson dashboards and year group/registration form pages. 

Unlike the Main Ask Arbor Assistant (which is focused on the whole school), these versions of Ask Arbor focus only on the students in that specific class ot group, making it easy to check key information right before or during a lesson.

To open one of these assistants, navigate to your lesson dashboard, year group or registration form page (for example, by going to My Items > My Classes > [Select your class] or by opening a Lesson Dashboard from your calendar) and click the green Ask Arbor button in the right-hand menu or the top-right corner.

More on this feature here: Ask Arbor: Using the Classroom and Pastoral Assistants

Examples you could try:

• Ask: "Who are the SEN students in this lesson?"

• Ask: "Where did the students come from before this lesson?"

• Ask: "How does the attendance of Pupil Premium students compare to others in the class?"

Suggest Comms

The Suggest Comms feature helps you quickly draft bulk letters, emails, or SMS messages to parents, guardians, or staff.

Examples you could try:

• Send a department email thanking them for their hard work this academic year, whilst calling out some of the key achievements that the school has achieved together.

• Write an individual letter to a guardian expressing praise or concern about a student, highlighting some of their key achievements this year in addition to behaviour incidents.

Student Summary

The Student Summary feature provides an instant overview of a student, bringing together their key data points such as attendance and behaviour. This is ideal when handling queries from parents or associated agencies.

Examples you could try:

• Provide an ad hoc student summary for a parent who has asked how their child is getting on at school.
• Provide a summary of a student for an associated adult, like a care worker or social worker.
• Provide a summary of a student's academic performance to help me prepare for a parents' evening.

• Provide a student summary as a basis for structuring written feedback to a student.

• Provide a Student Summary to help inspire you when writing termly or end-of-year written report cards for your class.

How do I use my school's AI allowance responsibly?

Because your school's AI allowance is shared across the whole school, it may seem daunting to try out Arbor AI if you fear using up an outsized part of your school's credits.

While this is a legitimate concern, our Free Allowances are designed to be sufficient for everyone in your school to feel the benefits of Arbor AI and, in practice, few schools actually reach their monthly limit.

That being said, there are things you can do to use Arbor AI efficiently and responsibly:

• Back-and-forth messages in Ask Arbor can quickly use up more of your allowance than you bargain for. To keep conversations to the point, familiarise yourself with prompting best practices and use our Prompt Libraries if you are not confident writing your own prompts. 

  The more targeted and precise your prompts, the less you will use per prompt and the lower the chance that you have to refine or clarify your prompt before you get the output you want. 
   

• Make use of the History feature in Ask Arbor to find previous chats easily, rather than starting a new chat about the same subject
   
• Personalise Ask Arbor to provide context about you upfront so that the AI does not have to ask for these details, and you do not have to clarify them every chat.
   
• Use Ask Arbor only when you need to. Compared to Ask Arbor Assistants, other AI features like Student Summaries and Suggested Communications use less of your allowance per output. So, familiarise yourself with every Arbor AI feature and choose the right tool for the job.