Not Your Default Chatbot: Five Teaching Applications of Custom AI Bots
As I've been talking with faculty at UVA and elsewhere about their experiments with custom AI chatbots, patterns have emerged in how instructors are using AI agents. This blog post outlines five different use cases with examples of each. I've also tried to point to a few key questions in designing these agents, like how important is it that the agent is trained on specific course material?
Tutor Bot. When I talk to STEM faculty, this is by far the most common use case of custom AI chatbots I hear about. The idea is that if we can “train” a custom chatbot on learning materials relevant to our course, we can create a helpful tutor that’s available 24-7 to our students. In episode 34 of my podcast, Sravanti Kantheti talked about the use of a tutor bot in her anatomy and physiology course. She pointed out that you can teach A&P at a 3rd grade level, a med school level, and anywhere in between. She appreciated that her tutor bot, which was trained on her course materials, would answer questions at a level that worked for her community college students. And in that podcast conversation with University of Sydney faculty, biochemistry instructor Matthew Clemson shared about his Cogniti-powered tutor bot which he dubbed “Dr MattTabolism.” He wanted students in his large classes to have a place to go to ask content questions that was available when he wasn’t (e.g. 2am) and would provide better answers than a Google search.