School of Modern Languages Pilots AI Assistant for Language Instruction Created by Alum Tucker von Holten

Georgia Tech alum Tucker von Holten, who mastered Spanish in high school and minored in German at the Institute, was surprised when his mother struggled to understand basic Spanish after more than a year of playing Duolingo.  

So, the 2020 computer science graduate asked his former German professors in the School of Modern Languages if they would take part in the ideation and pilot of a new language learning technology — one that would support classroom language instruction, rather than trying to take its place.  

“Language acquisition goes far beyond vocabulary and grammar,” said Associate Professor of German Britta Kallin. “We want students to experience the culture lived through the language.” 

Von Holten agreed, and so he got to work, founding the educational technology company Spirant AI. Over the next year, he stayed in contact with Kallin and other faculty members while creating the Spirant Assistant, a language learning tool suite that harnesses the strengths of generative artificial intelligence (AI) to support language students and instructors. 

“With the Spirant Assistant, we wanted to provide students with more robust tools for language learning,” said von Holten. “We also wanted to create a ‘digital teaching assistant’ for language instructors, who rarely have the luxury of TAs in their classrooms.” 

The Initial Pilot of the Spirant Assistant 

In Spring 2024, the Spirant Assistant was ready for its first classroom pilot — and the School of Modern Languages was up to the challenge. Kallin and her colleague, Assistant Professor of German Hyoun-A Joo, used the Spirant Assistant in their upper-level German classes at Georgia Tech.  

Kallin and Joo collected feedback from students and consulted with von Holten to share what was going well and suggest ways the assistant could be refined. 

“Tucker is uniquely qualified to create a language instruction tool. This project is informed by his experience as an alum, as someone with computer expertise, and as a person who knows what it’s like to excel in learning a language,” said Kallin. 

Kallin said that her students and Hyoun-A Joo’s found the spring class experience a positive one.  

“Students in our spring classes liked the writing and reading tools a lot, as well as the feedback and suggestions they got from the Spirant Assistant,” said Kallin. “We suggested a few adjustments, and Tucker has implemented those for the fall.” 

Kallin and John Lyon, professor, school chair, and Charles Smithgall Jr. Institute Chair in the School of Modern Languages, are piloting an updated version of the Spirant Assistant in their advanced German classes this semester.  

“Any new tool creates a new way of learning for our students and new ways of teaching for instructors,” said Kallin. “We’re learning how to implement the Spirant Assistant in ways that best support our students and the course design. It will be great to see how it evolves, and how our teaching might make progress as we use it more.”  

What Does the Spirant Assistant Do? 

When building the Spirant Assistant, von Holten and his team consulted with Modern Languages faculty about their needs. The result is a suite of different tools for instructors and students, all of which leverage the power of generative AI.  

The Assistant’s primary tool is “First Pass,” an AI first-draft support function that reviews a student essay, applies the instructor’s rubric such as grammar, suggests corrections in English or in the target language, and suggests a grade, which the instructor can either approve or change. 

“We were surprised to learn that instructors spend about half of their time grading,” said von Holten. “We wanted to create something that would help with that process.” 

Von Holten is sensitive to potential concerns about the accuracy of a virtual AI grading assistant and emphasizes that First Pass is meant only to support the process of grading, not replace it. Instead, he likens the role of generative AI in the classroom to that of the calculator.  

“The calculator fundamentally changed the way we teach and learn mathematics. Like the calculator, AI isn’t capable of human insight, reflection, or understanding. It’s a tool.” 

The Spirant Assistant also offers support for students, including an AI reading tool and a “storyteller” function that creates stories in the language students are learning. Another of its capabilities is tailoring any given piece of writing to the student’s reading level, making authentic or literary texts more easily understandable for students.  

“Instructors or students can use the storyteller to create a story that illustrates a set of vocabulary words, or that repeatedly uses a grammatical concept such as passive voice or subjunctive,” said von Holten.