How Penn Foster is scaling student success with AI feedback

The challenge

Delivering high-quality, consistent AI feedback at scale

With thousands of students submitting essays in a self-paced, asynchronous model, Penn Foster was facing mounting pressure on its English courses. First, with a high volume of submissions, the team needed to find ways to improve the delivery of timely, personalized feedback. Second, students often submitted off-topic or incomplete work, especially those new to academic writing. This created frustrating cycles of returns and resubmissions.

The third challenge was ensuring consistency. With many different graders working across a large and growing student population, maintaining a uniform standard of feedback was difficult.

“Because of our scale—over 90,000 students in our online high school—you can imagine the sheer volume of papers that are submitted that need to be graded,” said Andy. “So students get really frustrated if their paper’s late, or if they don’t understand the feedback, or if the feedback’s not always consistent. It creates a real learner experience issue.”

A deeper, more fundamental challenge was also at play that’s long plagued distance education: the “Iron Triangle”.

“The Iron Triangle is this idea that you can only have two of the following three critical factors: affordability, accessibility, and quality,” said Andy. “You can have affordability and access, but you can’t have quality. Personally, one of my career aspirations is to break it.”

The solution

Finding the right fit

Penn Foster set out to find an AI solution that could meet their specific requirements. They needed something that could deliver meaningful, rubric-aligned feedback—quickly, reliably, and at scale. But they also needed it to work within their complex tech stack. That meant handling large volumes of submissions and integrating smoothly with their existing learning management system and grading platform.

“We tested one vendor pretty seriously and tinkered with a few others, but they didn’t deliver the outcomes we were looking for,” said Andy. “The feedback was mostly grammar-focused, and that just wasn’t enough. We also needed a solution that could integrate well with our large, complex systems to deliver an optimal experience for our students. That was key.”

Andy first discovered Learnosity’s Feedback Aide through a trusted referral from a colleague who’d had positive experiences with the company while working for their previous employer. That initial recommendation led Andy to connect with Learnosity’s team at the ASU+GSV Summit, where Feedback Aide was being showcased ahead of its official launch. 

What stood out wasn’t just the product, but the credibility behind it: Learnosity’s proven track record powering assessments at scale for major publishers made a strong impression. Andy brought the opportunity back to his team, and from there the conversation deepened.

“We probably weren’t going to do well with somebody who hadn’t established credibility and capability at scale like you guys,” said Andy. “Things like effective pricing and the ability to digest our high volume of submissions were critical.”

A pilot followed, designed to test one key idea: could automated feedback help students improve their writing before submitting it to a human grader?

“We took more of an MVP approach to get this in front of students,” said Jessica Le Roux, Senior Product Manager, Learning Experience at Penn Foster. “Our goal was to validate the concept quickly and assess whether it could improve return rates, completion rates, and student satisfaction.”

By launching with a minimum viable product, the team was able to test core assumptions early and gather meaningful feedback. The initial results were promising, with key success metrics indicating positive impact. This data-driven validation gave the team confidence to invest further in refining the experience.

Student testing played a critical role in shaping the next iteration. Working closely with Learnosity, the Penn Foster team evolved the UI into a more intuitive, approachable, and user-friendly interface—grounded in real user insights and aligned with long-term product goals.

A partner, not just a product

Throughout the integration process, support from Learnosity played a big role in the product’s success. Responsive communications, quick turnarounds, and ongoing improvements helped Penn Foster slot Feedback Aide into its systems with confidence.

But what really made the difference was how well Feedback Aide aligned with Penn Foster’s mission. 

“We really want to be a market changer,” said Andy. “We’re looking for partners who have similar values and who are willing to come to the table and work with us toward that end. I see that in Learnosity as well.”

The outcome

Higher completions, lower costs, and a better student experience

The pilot’s impact was immediate. In courses using Feedback Aide, essay return rates dropped from 44% to just 21%. And the 30-day course completion rate rose by over five percentage points—proof that faster, more actionable feedback helped students move through their courses with greater momentum. 

Since the pilot ended, the return rate has fallen even further. With the introduction of the minimum-words-per-paragraph option, the grader return rate has dropped from 21% to under 5%, which resulted in less strain on grading teams and real cost savings.

“Students are now having a better experience—and there are significant cost reductions from fewer resubmissions,” said Andy. “Previously, almost 50% of students had to resubmit their papers. When you have over 90,000 students, that’s a pretty big number in terms of cost. You’re elevating the student experience, improving completions, and reducing costs. Those are big deal metrics.”

In a survey taken by students at the end of the course, Feedback Aide’s output was described as “Extremely Helpful” or “Somewhat Helpful” by 57% of learners in allowing them to prepare for exams, practice more critical thinking, and lower test anxiety.

Version 2.0 is rolling out to English 2 now, with English 3 and 4 to follow, so Penn Foster is expanding its use of Feedback Aide to support even more learners. Features like citation detection and short response feedback are opening the door to new use cases.

But what’s really exciting is where things are headed. Andy and Jessica see the future of writing instruction as a scaffolded journey, with frequent, low-stakes opportunities to get feedback and improve. 

“We’ll really break down the writing process into many steps and have students practice those steps—providing automated, quality, consistent feedback they can act on immediately,” said Andy. “Feedback Aide is one of the key components enabling us to break the Iron Triangle.”

Ready to test-drive Feedback Aide? Try live demos now across grade levels, subjects, and use cases ✨

About Penn Foster

Penn Foster‘s mission is to enhance the lives of our students and clients through the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and credentials that can help them work toward their goals of advancing in their chosen field, starting a new career, or pursuing lifelong learning.