Sandpiper: Orchestrated AI-Annotation for Educational Discourse at Scale

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Hedley, Daryl, Pietrzak, Doug, Dias, Jorge, Burden, Ian, Ahtisham, Bakhtawar, Zhou, Zhuqian, Vanacore, Kirk, Marland, Josh, Slama, Rachel, Reich, Justin, Koedinger, Kenneth, Kizilcec, René
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Hedley, Daryl
Pietrzak, Doug
Dias, Jorge
Burden, Ian
Ahtisham, Bakhtawar
Zhou, Zhuqian
Vanacore, Kirk
Marland, Josh
Slama, Rachel
Reich, Justin
Koedinger, Kenneth
Kizilcec, René
author_facet Hedley, Daryl
Pietrzak, Doug
Dias, Jorge
Burden, Ian
Ahtisham, Bakhtawar
Zhou, Zhuqian
Vanacore, Kirk
Marland, Josh
Slama, Rachel
Reich, Justin
Koedinger, Kenneth
Kizilcec, René
contents Digital educational environments are expanding toward complex AI and human discourse, providing researchers with an abundance of data that offers deep insights into learning and instructional processes. However, traditional qualitative analysis remains a labor-intensive bottleneck, severely limiting the scale at which this research can be conducted. We present Sandpiper, a mixed-initiative system designed to serve as a bridge between high-volume conversational data and human qualitative expertise. By tightly coupling interactive researcher dashboards with agentic Large Language Model (LLM) engines, the platform enables scalable analysis without sacrificing methodological rigor. Sandpiper addresses critical barriers to AI adoption in education by implementing context-aware, automated de-identification workflows supported by secure, university-housed infrastructure to ensure data privacy. Furthermore, the system employs schema-constrained orchestration to eliminate LLM hallucinations and enforces strict adherence to qualitative codebooks. An integrated evaluations engine allows for the continuous benchmarking of AI performance against human labels, fostering an iterative approach to model refinement and validation. We propose a user study to evaluate the system's efficacy in improving research efficiency, inter-rater reliability, and researcher trust in AI-assisted qualitative workflows.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_08406
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Sandpiper: Orchestrated AI-Annotation for Educational Discourse at Scale
Hedley, Daryl
Pietrzak, Doug
Dias, Jorge
Burden, Ian
Ahtisham, Bakhtawar
Zhou, Zhuqian
Vanacore, Kirk
Marland, Josh
Slama, Rachel
Reich, Justin
Koedinger, Kenneth
Kizilcec, René
Human-Computer Interaction
Computation and Language
Digital educational environments are expanding toward complex AI and human discourse, providing researchers with an abundance of data that offers deep insights into learning and instructional processes. However, traditional qualitative analysis remains a labor-intensive bottleneck, severely limiting the scale at which this research can be conducted. We present Sandpiper, a mixed-initiative system designed to serve as a bridge between high-volume conversational data and human qualitative expertise. By tightly coupling interactive researcher dashboards with agentic Large Language Model (LLM) engines, the platform enables scalable analysis without sacrificing methodological rigor. Sandpiper addresses critical barriers to AI adoption in education by implementing context-aware, automated de-identification workflows supported by secure, university-housed infrastructure to ensure data privacy. Furthermore, the system employs schema-constrained orchestration to eliminate LLM hallucinations and enforces strict adherence to qualitative codebooks. An integrated evaluations engine allows for the continuous benchmarking of AI performance against human labels, fostering an iterative approach to model refinement and validation. We propose a user study to evaluate the system's efficacy in improving research efficiency, inter-rater reliability, and researcher trust in AI-assisted qualitative workflows.
title Sandpiper: Orchestrated AI-Annotation for Educational Discourse at Scale
topic Human-Computer Interaction
Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.08406