Branching Minds is thrilled to announce the launch of the new AI Meeting Assistant, an AI-powered tool within the Branching Minds app aimed at helping schools and educators effortlessly plan, prepare for, and conduct student meetings while keeping track of student progress.

The AI Meeting Assistant can significantly streamline your MTSS meetings, foster better collaboration, and save valuable time. Check out the article below to learn how to schedule meetings and leverage the tool.

Note on Data Privacy and Security: At Branching Minds, we view AI as a valuable tool for enhancing educational solutions, helping educators support students in real-time. However, we prioritize responsible implementation, ensuring that AI benefits educators without compromising data privacy. We do not allow AI providers to train on customer data, safeguarding Personally Identifiable Information (P.I.I.) by discarding analyzed data immediately. This means that you can trust us to handle your data securely, allowing you to focus on supporting your students. To know more about our commitment to securing student data, check out our article on use of AI in Branching Minds here.

Let us now explore how the Meeting Assistant uses AI to reduce teacher effort in preparing for student MTSS meetings:

Creating an AI Agenda on the Student Meeting Page: The Meeting Assistant leverages AI to gather and consolidate student data from the platform, providing you with a concise summary of the student’s progress over the past few weeks. This includes assessment data, interventions, behavior incidents, attendance records, meeting notes, family communications, and any other relevant information logged on the platform. By automating this process, the Meeting Assistant saves educators valuable hours that would otherwise be spent preparing for meetings and compiling insights into a student's progress.

Transcribing and Summarizing the Meeting: During the meeting, the Branching Minds AI Assistant is an active listener, summarizing the discussion, including highlighting key points and outlining next steps brought up by the attendees. The AI tool is specifically designed to focus solely on conversations relevant to the student’s MTSS meeting, allowing attendees to speak naturally. Once the summary is prepared, it will be available on the Student Meeting page for all attendees and users associated with the student.

To know more about how Branching Minds approaches AI on the platform, check out this article.

1. A new meeting can be scheduled in 3 ways. You can select students from the Student List and click on Create Meeting in the Actions Dropdown.

Alternatively, you can go to the Student Overview page and click on Meetings.

Finally, you can create a meeting from the Meetings page by going to the Meetings icon on the side navigation bar and clicking on New Meeting.

2. This opens a modal. Select the type of meeting, add a title/description, and other details. You can schedule a meeting for one or multiple students at the same time by adding the names of all students you want to discuss as part of the meeting. You can also specify the staff members you'd like to invite to the meeting. If you are scheduling a meeting for a group of students, you can edit the list of invitees from the student meeting page if you expect to have different attendees for different students.

3. If you are creating a meeting for multiple students, you can select and edit the duration for each meeting. You can also rearrange the order in which you want to meet the students by using the drag and drop element next to each student's name.

4. When done, click Save. This will create the meeting. Click on the pop up to be taken to the Meeting Page and see this or other upcoming meetings. In case you are unable to see the meeting you just scheduled, give it a few minutes and/or try refreshing your page.

5. Once created, you can access a meeting for a student from the Meeting page or the Meeting Section of their Student Overview Page. You can edit the timing and attendees from here anytime before the actual meeting.

You can click on the Create with AI button to generate an AI agenda for the meeting or manually add one. Remember to Save your additions if you manually add an agenda. If no action has been taken, an AI agenda will be automatically created two days prior to a meeting (or right away, if the created meeting is scheduled within the next 2 days).

You are now all set for the meeting! All attendees would have received a calendar invite to their inboxes with a Google Meet link to join the meeting.

1. On the day of the meeting, attendees can join the meeting by clicking on the Google Meet link in their calendar invite.

2. In order to leverage the AI feature, one staff member, preferably the meeting organizer, would need to use Branching Minds to sign into the meeting. Follow the instructions in the yellow box at the top of the page to get the meeting started.

3. Click on Start Meeting. This will open Google Meet in a new tab and invite the BRM Meeting Assistant for that student to join the meeting. Once you have admitted the Meeting Assistant, you can navigate back to Branching Minds on your browser, and start the meeting as you normally would. If you do take any notes on the student meeting page, don't forget to click on Save.

4. You might notice a widget on your screen. This widget allows you to control the meeting and help you seamlessly switch from one student to the other in case you are meeting multiple students.

5. When you are finished discussing the student, you can click on Stop on the widget to conclude the meeting. This will make the BRM Meeting Assistant exit the Google Meet and the tool will start summarizing the discussion, which will appear on the student meeting page shortly.

6. If you are meeting regarding multiple students, you can click on Next Student in the widget to proceed to the next student on your agenda. Continue to follow the instructions in the yellow box on the top of the page.

In this case, after a few seconds, navigate to Google Meet to admit the BRM Meeting Assistant for this student.

Reporting Issues:

As AI technology continues to evolve, we appreciate your feedback. If you encounter any issues while using the tool or believe it is not functioning as expected, please don't hesitate to reach out to us. Your input is valuable in helping us improve the system.

Does the tool use any student or meeting data to train the AI?

You can have peace of mind knowing that the tool does not store or utilize any meeting data outside of the meeting context for training the AI. All information remains confidential and is only used to facilitate the specific meeting at hand. Your students' privacy and data security are our top priorities. If you have any further questions about data usage, feel free to reach out for more information.

If a district doesn't use Google Suite, will the calendar invite get added to their calendar tool?

Even if a district does not utilize Google Suite, users will still receive calendar invites sent to their respective email addresses. As long as users can access meet.google.com, they will be able to join the meeting using the provided link. Additionally, users can manually add the calendar invite to any calendar tool used by their district or school.

Who should start the meeting?

Any number of attendees can join the meeting using the Google Meet link provided. However, to utilize the AI Meeting Recording and Transcription feature, it is essential that at least one attendee logs in through Branching Minds and initiates the meeting from the Student Meeting Page for the first student. This ensures that the recording and transcription functions operate correctly.

Can the Google Meet link be sent out to the attendees ahead of time?

Yes, the Google Meet link can be sent out to attendees ahead of time. When creating a meeting, you can specify the attendees, which will automatically trigger an email invitation to all participants. Additionally, attendees can be added later, up until the start of the meeting, from the Student Meeting page. If you have any questions about this process or need assistance, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Can multiple staff be added to the meeting?

Absolutely, you can add up to 100 attendees to any meeting, which is the limit set by Google Meet. This allows for ample participation from your staff.

Is there a way to receive a copy or email of the summary of the meeting?

Currently, for student privacy and information security reasons, the meeting summary can only be accessed within the Branching Minds platform. At this time, there is no option to email a copy of the summary.

Will AI overwrite my manual agenda?

Forty-eight hours before your scheduled meeting, our AI tool will automatically generate an agenda for you. However, if you have already entered a manual agenda, this automatic generation will not occur. Additionally, if you schedule a meeting with less than 48 hours’ notice, an AI-generated agenda will be created immediately to assist you.

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