A few weeks ago, Ferris State University flashy announcement It plans to enroll two chatbot “students” in its classes, which it says is a new way for universities to test their curriculum.
In some ways, this unusual idea appears to be a publicity stunt to draw attention to academic majors in artificial intelligence. local tv news Broadcasters jumped at the idea of non-human classmates attending hybrid university classes alongside T-shirt-wearing youngsters. But the experiment also raises interesting possibilities and ethical questions about how modern AI techniques can be used to improve education.
In fact, the experiment at Michigan’s public universities could be seen as the beginning of a new generation in the field known as “learning analytics.” This is an approach that has grown over the past decade or so, allowing universities to leverage the digital breadcrumbs that students leave behind as they move through digital platforms and online course materials to improve course design and tailor it to individual students. I’m trying to find patterns that allow me to personalize my teaching materials.
“AI has the potential to give us new ways to see things that were previously invisible,” said Kyle Bowen, deputy chief information officer at Arizona State University. “Now we can have the concept of a data doppelgänger, the concept that there is something at the data level that reflects the persona.”
In other words, generative AI tools like ChatGPT allow educators to monitor students who embody different profiles (for example, first-generation students and You can create a simulation of a student who is struggling in a particular subject and check it out. What happens when you encounter teaching materials in a university class?
“How can we fine-tune the responses from the AI to reflect the diversity of our students or reflect the needs of first-year students?” Bowen asks, and in doing so, improves the learning experience. He suggested that this could provide new insights for people designing.
Arizona State University hasn’t created virtual students, but it recently announced a major initiative to experiment with AI to improve education.Last month, the university became the first higher education institution to Partner with OpenAIthe organization behind ChatGPT, whose goals are to “promote student success” and “streamline organizational processes.”
Other universities are also implementing the latest AI to better understand student data. Paul LeBlanc, who stepped down as president of Southern New Hampshire University late last year, announced his next step will be to lead the university’s project to reimagine university education using ChatGPT and other AI tools.
So what can generative AI do to improve learning?
Creating an AI “student”
So far, few details about the Ferris State University experiment have been released. University spokesperson Dave Murray told EdSurge that chatbot students have not yet begun taking classes.
Officials say it’s still under construction. The two chatbots are named “Ann” and “Fly,” the former named after university librarian Ann Breitenwisher, and the latter named after the initiative’s leader, Casey Thompson, at the former McDonald’s headquarters. Named after the fact that he worked in We interviewed real students to help develop our AI bot personas.
The bot is reportedly It has voice recognition and voice capabilities, allowing you to participate in class discussions with real students and ask questions to your professor. The AI agent is fed information from the course syllabus and also submits assignments.
“The entire role of universities is evolving to meet the needs of how society is evolving,” said Thompson, special assistant to the president for innovation and entrepreneurship at Ferris State University. told a local TV station. “And what is it that we want to learn from Ann and Fry? How can we make that experience better for students?”
“The goal is to have them in class this semester,” Murray said.
Seth Blott, a sophomore majoring in information security at Ferris State University, plans to give his robotic classmates a warm welcome.
When he heard about the project from one of his professors, he says he was “excited.” “I would love to take a class with one of these bots and see how they perform,” he says.
Brott said he experimented with ChatGPT for several assignments in class. He said that while the technology helped him come up with ideas for a public speaking class, it was less helpful when he was allowed to use it in an information security class to suggest ways to secure data systems. I am.
So does he think chatbots can run his course?
“Chatbots probably don’t work very well at this point,” he speculates. “But they can learn. When they make a mistake, they receive feedback just like we do.” And, over time, universities can use chatbot students to thrive in the classroom. He says it will be possible to improve it.
He said he is excited that the university is trying innovative experiments. And he also hopes it might help universities improve their teaching. For example, one of his friends recently told him about a course where the average grade for the entire class was only 60 percent by the midterm exam. To him, it seemed like an opportunity to send out a chatbot to see how instructions could be made clearer for students.
However, not all students are enthusiastic. Johnny Chan, a graduate student at Stanford University, organized his national online seminar last summer to encourage more educators to learn about and try his AI, but Ferris State University’s I had some questions about the approach.
“If your goal is to get feedback about the student experience, you need to build tools that allow administrators to better have conversations with real students,” Chan says.
He is currently pursuing a master’s degree in computer science, with a focus on artificial intelligence, but the danger of creating chatbot students is that they could introduce “inherent biases” based on how they are trained. It is said that there is. For example, if a chatbot’s students are trained based only on a certain type of student, “underrepresented student populations may end up feeling unsupported,” Chan says.
However, that doesn’t mean AI can’t play a role in improving universities. He suggested that Ferris State University leaders could create a tool that prompts students at various points in the learning process and asks them to fill out simple survey questions. AI can then be used to classify, organize, and synthesize all your data in ways that were too difficult with previous technologies.
“If the goal is to gain insight from student behavior, analysis and summarization are what these chatbots are good at, sort of like co-pilots for administrators,” Chan says.
Ferris State University spokeswoman Murray said the university is open to trying different approaches.
“We frequently talk to students about their experiences and make changes based on their feedback. This is an additive approach,” he says. “We’re interested in what kinds of educational applications we can develop. We’re not just learning what works, but what needs to be improved, and what doesn’t work at all.” You will also learn what it is possible not to do.”
Construction of “Silabot”
Arizona State University says after inviting the community for ideas on how to use ChatGPT, leaders approved more than 100 different projects involving hundreds of faculty and staff. After that, we plan to invite students who will lead the project.
“We want to do a lot of experimentation,” he says.
One idea currently being considered is a project “we jokingly call it Syllabot,” he said. The concept is: What if the syllabus was not a static document, but something students could ask questions about?
“If there’s an assignment to work on, like a writing prompt, they might ask, ‘How do I go about it?'” he says.
Overall, he says, the university is working on a strategy centered around “an AI platform for ASU that will fuse our data here.”
And once large-scale language models can be fused with university-specific analytical data, Bowen says the big question will be, “How can we help you take action on that insight?” .