Feedback Without the Wait: Piloting a Generative AI Practice Platform in a Large Maths Class

Abstract

Timely and specific feedback is one of the strongest influences on student learning, yet it is difficult to sustain in large electrical engineering classes where the ratio of students to demonstrators is high and a learner who is stuck may wait days to find out why an approach was wrong. Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) offers a way to scale conversational feedback, but using it to grade assessed work raises trust and accountability concerns, and keeping a human in the loop to assure its judgements reintroduces the very delay that erodes the value of feedback. The result is a tension between the immediacy that makes feedback so impactful and the human oversight that makes it trustworthy. In this work, we set out to resolve that tension in practice by designing and piloting a GenAI practice platform that delivers immediate, scaffolded feedback during self-directed practice. This relocates human oversight from real-time grading to the upfront verification of solutions. Our goal was to understand how students engaged with the tool, how they perceived the value and reliability of its feedback, and what lessons transfer to other engineering subjects.