Learners should leverage chatbots and virtual assistants to offer them personalized round-the-clock learning support, ensuring learners have continuous access to assistance and resources, thereby promoting learning autonomy.
Applicable Principles (the why)
Generative AI Literacy
- Instructors and learners need to know how and when to use AI appropriately.
Academic Integrity
- Instructors and learners should use AI in ethical ways.
- Learners are responsible for doing the work to learn.
Keeping Humans in an Active Role
- Instructors and learners should have access to a personalized learning experience with AI .
Inclusion, Equity, and Access
- Instructors and learners should have equitable access to generative AI tools and their needs should be accommodated.
Scalability and Integration
- Instructors and learners will have increasing demands for the use of AI, so it will need to be scalable.
Practical Application (the what)
Bloom’s Two Sigma Problem highlights a significant educational insight: learners receiving one-on-one tutoring and employing mastery learning techniques typically outperform their peers in traditional classroom settings by two standard deviations. This finding underscores the profound impact of personalized education. With the emergence of generative AI, the opportunity to scale this personalized tutoring approach has become a reality.
Whether it’s the learner who chooses to be self-directed in their own learning or an innovative instructor who encourages and enables learners to use these tools for mastery learning, the end result is the same. Generative AI can engage learners with customized questions and provide immediate, personalized feedback, catering to the unique learning needs and pace of each individual. This approach not only democratizes access to personalized learning but also aligns with the principles of mastery learning, potentially replicating the significant gains identified by Bloom’s research on a much broader scale.
The practical application of virtual assistants involves not just the technology integration, but also a holistic approach to training, support, and continuous improvement to ensure they meet the evolving needs of learners and instructors.
Onboarding and Training
- Develop comprehensive training programs for learners and instructors to familiarize them with the virtual assistant’s capabilities, use cases, and how to interact with it effectively.
- Create tutorials and guides that are easily accessible, explaining how to use the virtual assistant for various tasks and support.
Integration with Learning Management Systems (LMS)
- Seamlessly integrate the virtual assistant with the institution’s LMS to allow learners to ask questions, receive personalized learning resources, and track their progress directly through the assistant.
- Enable the virtual assistant to push notifications about deadlines, assignments, and updates from courses directly to learners.
Personalized Learning Support
- Use AI to analyze learners’ learning habits, strengths, and weaknesses, allowing the virtual assistant to offer personalized study tips, recommend resources, and tailor support to individual learning paths.
- Implement adaptive learning strategies where the assistant dynamically adjusts the complexity of study materials based on the learner’s mastery level.
Administrative Assistance
- Allow learners to interact with the virtual assistant for administrative tasks such as enrollment, timetable inquiries, campus information, and financial services queries.
- Automate routine inquiries to reduce the workload on human staff and improve response times for learners.
Continuous Learning and Improvement
- Collect and analyze feedback from users to understand their needs and experiences with the virtual assistant.
- Use insights gained from user interactions to continuously refine and expand the assistant’s knowledge base, ensuring it remains up-to-date with the latest information and teaching methodologies.
Ethical Considerations and Privacy
- Ensure compliance with privacy laws and ethical guidelines to protect learners’ personal information and data generated through interactions with the virtual assistant.
- Regularly review and update privacy settings and consent protocols to give learners control over their data.
Support for Learners with Disabilities
- Implement accessibility features such as voice-to-text, text-to-speech, and easy-to-navigate interfaces to make the virtual assistant accessible to all learners, including those with disabilities.
Enhance Research and Collaboration
- Facilitate research by guiding learners through databases, journals, and other resources, making it easier to find relevant information for their projects or studies.
- Promote collaboration by integrating features that allow learners to easily connect with peers, join study groups, or participate in forums and discussions.
Resources
A number of efforts have been started on campus to create and implement virtual assistants on campus each with a slightly different flavor.
- aristAI: “Our AI offers learners highly relevant and accurate responses to course-related questions”, incubated from Gies College of Business, Jiheng Jing
- Illinois Assistant: A part of the Illinois App (in development), Rokwire | Smart, Healthy Communities Initiative, Bill Sullivan
- iReview: Scans course materials, including videos, and answer questions about the course, including referencing the original materials, Gies College of Business, Adam King
- UIUC.chat: “Upload your videos, any number of PDFs, PowerPoint, Word, Excel and almost anything to chat with your knowledge base”, NCSA, Kastan Day
Other resources
Best Practices
Leverage Personalized Learning Support