Doing Good with Data: What We Learned from a Personalized Story Generator for ESL Students

Time Technology, a UK Salesforce consulting partner for charities, built a personalized story generator for ESL students that runs on a single FormAssembly form, a custom Salesforce object, and some well-placed code. The result? Each student who uses this tool receives a story at their English level, and teachers receive a scored, printable record.

In our recent webinar, Doing Good with Data: How Time Technology Built a Personalised Story Generator for ESL Students, a team of Salesforce consultants from Time Technology walked through the build, shared what they would do differently, and answered audience questions. The project won FormAssembly’s “Build a Form, Make a Difference” contest, which invited partners to show what happens when digital forms and data automation land in the hands of people doing good.

Key Takeaways

• A personalized story generator for ESL students can run on a single FormAssembly form, with Salesforce or without it.
• Prefill and conditional logic do the personalization by pulling in a student’s name, pronouns, and English level, then showing only the choices that fit.
• Teachers stay in the loop, receiving a PDF of each story and the student’s answers to review and annotate by hand.
• Time Technology chose to send a $1,000 donation to Swansea Asylum Seekers Support.

About Time Technology

Time Technology is a UK-based Salesforce consulting partner that works exclusively with charities and nonprofits in the UK and Ireland, supporting more than 55 organizations that range from small charities to those with hundreds of staff.

Time Technology opened the webinar with an example that is familiar to nonprofits – the grant application. Most grant forms ask the same questions about who you are, how you will use the money, and what your budget looks like. In FormAssembly, Time Technology handles the variations with:

• Themes and branding. One click switches a form between partner logos and styling.
• Conditional logic. Fields and whole sections appear or disappear depending on whether someone applies for themselves or on behalf of others.
• Validation and eligibility warnings. Applicants learn on page one that they don’t qualify, so no one fills out four pages for nothing.
• Salesforce prefill. Values such as age and gender come straight from the CRM.
• Save and resume. Applicants can pause to find a bank statement and pick up where they left off.
• Automatic record handling. Each submission links to the right contact, creates records when none exist, and notifies the grants team.

These features help applicants complete forms quickly and easily, and lead to a reduction in calls from applicants who got stuck for Time Technology.

How does the story generator work?

The story generator that Time Technology built works by assembling pre-written story blocks that match a student’s English level and age. Before building anything, Time Technology studied the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) to understand which language suits each level. The team chose three levels, A1, A2, and B1, because B2 and above was too complex for the project.

The story blocks cover:

• Three age ranges: 5 to 10, 11 to 15, and 16 and older.
• Five or six story areas in each age range, such as a farm or making a new friend.
• Five binary choices in each story that shape what happens next.

A former English teacher at Time Technology drafted the blocks with generative AI help to save time. According to Time Technology, the result lets teachers create over 1,600 learning materials.

Inside FormAssembly, two hidden sections do the heavy lifting. The first holds the values prefilled from Salesforce: English level, gender for pronouns, name, and contact ID. The second holds the generated story, vocabulary list, quiz questions, correct answers, and a PDF link. Custom code assembles the story. One formula counts answered questions so the “send homework to teacher” button only appears once all five are done, and a second formula compares correct answers with the student’s answers to produce a score.

The score also decides which celebratory (or sympathetic) GIF the student sees after submitting. Salesforce then stores a Homework Story record linked to the student’s contact, with the level, age, each question, the correct answer, the student’s answer, and the PDF.

Time Technology also restyled the form with custom CSS. “We were trying to make it look a bit different, not like a form,” said a Time Technology delivery consultant.

The PDF matters because Time Technology doesn’t intend the technology to replace the teacher. “Teaching is a very personal thing, you can’t just do it all via computers,” said the same consultant, who taught English for many years. A teacher can print the story, write a note, and hand it back with a smiley face or a sticker.

When should you use Fai instead of a general-purpose AI assistant?

Use Fai instead of a general-purpose AI assistant once you’re working inside FormAssembly, and use the general assistant to plan and draft. The Time Technology consultant started with a general assistant for the code, hit a wall, and remembered Fai. The problem was the wrong tags in the code. Fai spotted it, explained it, and fixed it in about 10 seconds, which also got the “generate story” button behaving as intended.

“I would start with Fai if I were doing this again,” the consultant said. Fai knows FormAssembly’s advanced features, custom logic, and options for changing a form’s look and feel. You describe what you want in plain language, review a preview of the change, and decide whether to save it. Humans stay in control of every change.

Fai has two limits worth knowing:

• Data access. For security reasons, Fai can’t access personally identifiable information or the data respondents submit.
• Plan access. Fai is included with FormAssembly Team and higher plans, so individual or legacy accounts may not see it.

Do you need Salesforce to build something like this?

You do not need Salesforce to build a story generator like this one. Time Technology built on Salesforce because it’s their specialty, but everything in the demo works with FormAssembly alone. A workflow can send the teacher a notification with a PDF of the story and the student’s answers. FormAssembly also connects to Google and Microsoft tools, so scores could update a spreadsheet in real time.

Can the generator grade writing, or only multiple choice?

The story generator grades only multiple-choice answers. Grading free-text writing would need a multistep process outside FormAssembly, because Fai can’t see respondent data. Two options came up in the Q&A:

• Send responses to Salesforce and train an agent there, using guardrails you define.
• Download responses and use an AI tool your organization has approved.

Either way, a person should check the results.

Where did the $1,000 donation go?

The $1,000 donation that Time Technology was awarded for winning the “Build a Form, Make a Difference” contest went to Swansea Asylum Seekers Support (SASS). SASS is a volunteer-led registered charity that opened in 1999, the year the UK government began dispersing asylum seekers across the country. Its members include asylum seekers, refugees, and local residents.

SASS runs twice-weekly drop-ins with hot food, craft activities, and donated items, plus English classes throughout the week. Swansea is hilly, and with more than 800 asylum seekers in the city, about 30 percent of them children, getting around can be isolating. A recent gift of 11 bicycles, with helmets and locks, helps people reach classes, friends, and fresh air.

Learn more about how you can support SASS here. 

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a personalized story generator for ESL students?

A personalized story generator for ESL students is a form that builds a short story from pre-written blocks based on a student’s name, pronouns, English level, and age. In Time Technology’s version, students pick a story area and make five choices, then answer five comprehension questions, and the teacher receives the student’s score on the exercise automatically via Salesforce.

Does FormAssembly require Salesforce?

FormAssembly does not require Salesforce. Salesforce is one of many powerful connections, but FormAssembly also works with Google, Microsoft, and other tools or on its own, with notifications and PDFs sent straight to the person who needs them.

What is Fai?

Fai is FormAssembly’s AI assistant. Fai helps you build and update forms, logic, and workflows in plain language, and you preview each change before saving it. Fai is available on FormAssembly Team and higher plans.

Can Fai see my respondents’ data?

FormAssembly does not collect any respondent data to train AI models. Form responses, workflows, and personally identifiable information (PII) are not stored or used for AI training. If you’re the admin of a FormAssembly account, you can control AI feature availability through the Admin Dashboard. 

Can FormAssembly grade a student’s written answers?

FormAssembly can score multiple-choice answers with formulas, but it can’t grade free-text writing on its own. Free-text grading would require a separate, approved AI tool or a Salesforce agent, with a person reviewing the results.

Watch the full webinar

The full webinar replay includes the live demo of the form, the Salesforce record view, the GIF feedback screens, and the complete audience Q&A. Watch the on-demand replay here.