A day at Hogwarts.

Chapter 685 Teaching System

While Hermione and Harry were discussing how to use magic to improve their learning efficiency, Charles welcomed guests to his alchemical experiment tower.

The enormous red gemstone, which he bought for £150000 last year, floated above the base, shimmering with multicolored light, reminding Dumbledore of the blood vessels in his brain.

"It seems you're making good progress." The principal's expression was serious, as if he had completely understood the red gem.

Professor Delacour looked at Dumbledore with admiration. This ruby ​​was the core of the magical grand model that Charles was studying, but although he had been there many times, he basically didn't understand it, only knowing that it was somewhat related to the recipe grand model.

Professor McGonagall simply glanced at her old friend speechlessly, clearly knowing that he didn't know much more than Delacour.

Charles cleared his throat, walked to the ruby, faced the three guests with a salesman's smile, and said loudly, "Today, I would like to introduce to you a revolutionary invention in the field of education, the intelligent teaching assistant—the Merlin System."

This system was modified from the magic model, and the most troublesome part was naming it, which took him a lot of brainpower.

Charles pointed to the sofa and tea that had been prepared, and everyone took their seats before he continued his speech.

"The impetus for the birth of the Merlin system stemmed from a problem that I heard Professor Delacour encountered a few days ago."

"As Professor Umbridge requested, it was very difficult to create monthly exams for students in all seven grades, so I was thinking about whether I could lighten the professors' burden."

Professor Delacour nodded and said, "Yes, it is indeed not an easy job."

Professor McGonagall nodded in agreement, saying, "Umbridge's policies have disrupted the professors' original teaching rhythm, making it very difficult for everyone to adapt."

Dumbledore stared at Charles expressionlessly, as if he hadn't heard the staff's complaints.

Charles continued, "So, I referenced established recipe models and combined them with existing mobile library technology to create a trial version of the Merlin system."

Professor Delacour asked curiously, "Just a trial?"

Charles nodded and replied, "Yes, it can only be used for three months at the moment. After that, it will go into hibernation due to insufficient magic power."

Dumbledore immediately understood the underlying meaning in his words and said, "Charles, if the Merlin System receives positive feedback from the professors, Hogwarts wouldn't mind infusing it with golden magic."

Charles's smile became more genuine.

This system isn't just sold to Hogwarts; it's also sold to other magic schools.

"Let me explain its functions."

As Charles spoke, a roll of parchment floated to each of them.

The parchment was opened, revealing an animated illustration.

"First of all, the Merlin system has the function of generating questions."

Everyone saw the demonstration animation begin to appear on the parchment.

"The system has a database similar to a mobile library. I have already entered textbooks, supplementary books and papers from some important academic journals for seven grades into the database."

"The Merlin system can quickly generate an exam paper based on the user's instructions, such as the test points and difficulty level."

"At this point, the exam paper provided by the Merlin system is still a draft. Professors can adjust the difficulty, add or remove questions, and modify details as needed to finally obtain a satisfactory exam paper."

At this point, a trial interface appeared on the parchment. Following the prompts, Professor McGonagall selected several knowledge points for first grade, chose the question type and number of questions, set the difficulty to monthly exam, and pressed generate.

A flash of light appeared from the red gemstone beside him, and several multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, true/false, and short-answer questions appeared on the parchment.

Professor McGonagall reviewed the questions carefully and found that they were basically fine. She could see some similarities to questions in the study guides, but there were some significant adjustments. They could be used directly as exam questions for students.

She and Professor Delacour exchanged a glance and nodded in unison, quite satisfied with the feature.

Charles saw the two professors nod and thought to himself that he had passed the first hurdle, but there were even more attractive features to come.

“Next is the function for students to answer questions and for professors to grade and score them,” Charles continued.

"Students use special parchment and quill pens to answer questions. The questions are transmitted to the parchment like a communication notebook, and then graded collectively after the exam."

"For objective questions, the Merlin system can complete the grading instantly and accurately."

"For subjective questions, the system can currently retrieve keywords of knowledge points and make a preliminary judgment on which knowledge points are involved in the answer."

"The next goal is to automatically analyze the answers to subjective questions, determine the core arguments, accuracy of citations, and logical completeness of students' answers, and conduct in-depth comparisons with the knowledge base to ultimately generate a detailed scoring reference report, listing key scoring points, knowledge omissions, and suggested score ranges." "The final scoring authority still rests with the professors; the Merlin system only provides analytical references to help professors judge the quality of answers more quickly."

Finally, the system will calculate the score.

Professor McGonagall looked surprised; she hadn't expected Charles to have such a feature.

Professor Delacour said with a smile, "Charles, could you help some of the students write neater?"

Although his English is quite good, he still gets a headache when faced with some students' odd handwriting.

Charles smiled and nodded.

At this point, Dumbledore asked, "Charles, so with the Merlin System, it will be much easier for professors to prepare for exams?"

In his view, the Merlin system is a good tool.

Charles replied earnestly, “What the principal said makes a lot of sense. The Merlin system frees professors from tedious, repetitive work, allowing them to focus their energy on more important tasks.”

As he spoke, the contents of the parchment changed, transforming into several charts.

"The most powerful aspect of the Merlin system is its strong data analysis capabilities. It can generate performance analysis reports for the entire school, all grades, or specific classes, including average scores, score distribution, and knowledge point scoring rates, which are all clearly presented. It can easily identify weak points in teaching and then strengthen them in a targeted manner."

"Furthermore, the Merlin system can integrate students' daily homework scores and monthly exam scores for correlation analysis, which can reveal each student's learning trajectory, locate their knowledge gaps, and develop learning plans for students."

"This is the most important function of the Merlin system."

The principal and the two professors fell into deep thought upon hearing the final words.

They have their own teaching methods, but like everyone else, they start with assessments to judge students' learning progress.

The parchment now demonstrates this most important function: one student gets full marks on regular homework but poor grades on the monthly exam, while another student gets extremely poor grades on regular homework or even doesn't do it at all, but gets almost full marks on the monthly exam. Merlin system immediately gives a prompt.

Professor McGonagall immediately realized that the first student had likely been copying homework during the regular semester, but was caught when there was nothing left to copy during the monthly exam; while the second student had been just going through the motions during the regular semester, but cheated on the monthly exam.

While there are exceptions, those are rare events, similar to Snape washing his hair; in most cases, the students are the ones with the problem.

In the past, one could only rely on their memory and experience to discover such problems, but now it is much more convenient, as there is a system to issue early warnings.

Professor Delacour was very satisfied with this feature.

Alchemy is a very precise discipline, and many things require quantitative analysis. Merlin's system of numerical analysis suited him perfectly and made up for his lack of teaching experience.

“What a brilliant invention!” Professor Delacour exclaimed. “The Merlin system saves far more than just time and effort; it frees us from repetitive tasks, allowing us to focus more on guiding thought and inspiring wisdom.”

Professor McGonagall nodded in agreement and looked at the principal.

Dumbledore pondered for a long time, and the tower fell silent, with only the ticking of the wall clock.

“Another revolutionary invention,” he said to Charles with a smile. “You’ve always been bringing vitality to the world.”

Dumbledore already knew that some of Charles's inventions had prototypes in the Muggle world, and this time would probably be no exception.

However, while there are many wizards of Muggle origin, none have done what Charles has done on such a large scale, referencing Muggle society to create a convenient and comfortable lifestyle within the wizarding world.

Dumbledore was quite open-minded about this. Back then, the train from London to Hogsmeade was met with strong opposition, but it has now become the foundation of Hogwarts.

Trains were not an isolated case; radios and phonographs were the same back then.

“Charles,” Dumbledore said, turning to business, “how about Hogwarts try out the Merlin System for a while, starting with Transfiguration and Alchemy classes?”

For something new that affects the entire school, it's best to be cautious.

Charles agreed without hesitation, saying, "No problem. The most important part of the Merlin system is the software. To expand it to other subjects, we just need to add a dedicated client for professors."

"Let me see……"

"Well, although there's not much time left, we can use the Merlin System for this month's monthly exam."

The professor's client is the parchment in their hands; all that's left is to mass-produce the student clients, which isn't a problem.

(End of this chapter)