Resumen de Platform-independent and curriculum-oriented intelligent assistant for higher education
Ramteja Sajja, Yusuf Sermet, David Cwiertny, İbrahim Demirci
Miscommunication between instructors and students is a signifcant obstacle to postsecondary learning. Students may skip ofce hours due to insecurities or scheduling conficts, which can lead to missed opportunities for questions. To support self-paced learning and encourage creative thinking skills, academic institutions must redefne their approach to education by ofering fexible educational pathways that recognize continuous learning. To this end, we developed an AI-augmented intelligent educational assistance framework based on a powerful language model (i.e., GPT-3) that automatically generates course-specifc intelligent assistants regardless of discipline or academic level. The virtual intelligent teaching assistant (TA) system, which is at the core of our framework, serves as a voice-enabled helper capable of answering a wide range of course-specifc questions, from curriculum to logistics and course policies. By providing students with easy access to this information, the virtual TA can help to improve engagement and reduce barriers to learning. At the same time, it can also help to reduce the logistical workload for instructors and TAs, freeing up their time to focus on other aspects of teaching and supporting students. Its GPT-3-based knowledge discovery component and the generalized system architecture are presented accompanied by a methodical evaluation of the system’s accuracy and performance.
