Education and learning are evolving. Students expect interactive and engaging learning experiences and to discover the information they need at their fingertips, but they still need in-person support. A custom GPT bot can become the perfect course-focused learning assistant for students, thus freeing tutor time for all-important one-to-one or class sessions.
Let’s investigate some of the challenges experienced by both educators and students and how custom AI chatbots can meet some of these problems. Then, we’ll take a look at how Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship (Trust Center) is using its CustomGPT.ai generative AI chatbot.
Student Expectations and Learning Experiences are Changing
Did you know that 98% of universities moved their classes online during the COVID-19 pandemic? Or that 77% of academic leaders believe online education is equal or superior to traditional learning? What about the fact that e-learning helps students retain 25% to 60% more information?
These statistics and many more illustrate how student expectations and learning experiences are changing. Even traditional learning institutions deliver blended learning in many programs that were once classroom-based. Blended learning can see courses delivered on campus, in-person, and online. There are hundreds of thousands of online-only courses available through platforms like Coursera and Udemy, and tech bootcamps have appeared in recent years to train new generations of developers, analysts, and engineers in a matter of months.
So, what are some of today’s challenges for educators and students?
Attracting students amidst increasing competition
The first challenge for educators, course managers, and institutions is to communicate a course curriculum and benefits clearly and to attract students to join. Educators increasingly need to think like marketers, providing as much added value, engagement, and ease to their courses as possible.
Blended learning and time management
With many courses, even degree level, now a mix of e-learning, online and in-class, it’s tough for students to keep track of where, when, and how they are learning. Scheduling tools are handy, but sometimes, they take time to populate and decipher.
Lack of interaction with peers and instructors
Although many students learn well, even better, online and with e-learning programs, many students also suffer from a lack of interaction with peers and instructors. Even just simple actions like checking what class is next, asking for clarification, or needing a gentle nudge in the direction needed to find the right exam prep material.
Instructor time
Education is now a business like any other. The number of students on any course is maximized to cover course investment or, in many cases, to profit. Instructors are under pressure, teaching and supporting many students. Their time for non-critical matters is short because their focus needs to be on helping where it is most required and ensuring each student gets sufficient instructor time.
Complex topics condensed into shorter courses
In recent years, the number of bootcamp courses has surged, offering students the opportunity to condense technical learning into shorter programs as a route to technology careers. These courses are fast-paced and can be high-pressured, leaving little time for students to practice their skills, collaborate with peers, or relax into learning.
Deploying the latest technology
Educators are finding themselves needing to constantly catch up with the latest learning tools as technological progression advances rapidly across all sectors. This is in addition to ensuring course content is up to date.
Serving different generations and learner types
Outside of traditional learning pathways, many courses include learners from different generations and backgrounds. No matter the course, there will be different types of learners and students at different levels of learning per topic. These factors add to the complexities instructors must navigate to ensure the success of every student.
CustomGPT.ai: Create an Interactive AI Course Assistant
Some of the challenges faced by educators and students can be mitigated with an interactive generative AI course assistant. Using CustomGPT.ai, course providers can create tailored GPT chatbots to do anything from helping students find the right course to supporting them along their learning journey.
CustomGPT.ai uses ChatGPT’s generative AI and large language model (LLM) but with an extra layer or “guardrails” and a custom persona. When you create your custom GPT chatbot, you do so by adding only your information. For educators, this can be course information, curriculum, prerequisites, dates and times, and other prospectus information to answer student’s questions before they choose a course. Or, custom bots can be created for only students of a certain course to access; this bot can be populated with all the course learning material as well as supporting documents, PDFs, web links, and research.
Instead of students needing to wade through websites, curriculums, and learning materials, they can simply ask the custom GPT bot questions. Generative AI can answer just like a human, in a conversational form that makes for a dynamic and engaging experience.
Once it’s been provided the information, when questioned, a CustomGPT.ai bot can:
- Answer specific questions about the duration, costs, prerequisites, expectations, and outcomes of every course offered
- Provide answers in 93 available languages
- Tell students when their next in-class session is or when an assignment is due
- Help students prioritize workflows based on what’s next in the course schedule
- Save instructors time on answering basic questions
- Provide students an extra “ear” to check information or clarify course content
- Answer technical questions based on the information provided
- Summarise document or section content
- Cite specific resources (chosen by the educator) on topics for students to learn more
- Give students tips on learning styles and exam preparation
- Save students time searching websites or documents
- Serve as a complete knowledge base accessible by asking questions
- Explain how students can connect with peers, tutors or find further events and resources
- Refer students to a tutor for human one-to-one assistance
One of the great benefits of a CustomGPT.ai bot is that it only uses the information provided by its creator. If an institution or educator has chosen specific sources of further research or theories that students should study in their course, the custom GPT bot will only provide answers based on these preferences. In contrast, ChatGPT and competitors will answer from their gigantic data sets and can misunderstand, propagate bias, or “hallucinate” and provide inaccurate answers.
CustomGPT.ai & MIT: An AI Education Case Study
Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship chose CustomGPT.ai for its generative AI chatbot because of its scalable data ingestion platform. CustomGPT.ai enabled the Trust Center to bring together its entrepreneurship knowledge bases and build its one-stop shop for entrepreneurs. The resulting bot “ChatMTC” is hosted on the center’s website to address questions from students and budding entrepreneurs.
“We needed a Generative AI platform that would provide trustworthy responses based on our own content, without any hallucination problems.”
— Doug Williams, Product Lead, Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship
CustomGPT.ai is a leading generative AI solution that enables educators and institutions to bring together all of their knowledge base across a variety of document, helpdesk, audio, and video formats using a scalable and secure data-ingestion platform and create custom generative AI chatbots using the latest ChatGPT technology. Try the live demo to learn more.
