Morris, the former interim department chair of chemistry at Morehouse College, is launching a handful of AI teaching assistants (TAs) to improve student success outcomes and access to emerging technologies, she said. The idea is to offer an online teaching assistant reflecting both the learning goals of the course and the personality of the instructor teaching it. Unlike generative AI chatbots, they are trained on specific curricula and can use visuals to help explain course concepts.
This fall, Morehouse will roll out a pilot program for these teaching assistants. Including Morris, five instructors will use them, with the goal of expanding to every instructor in the next three to five years.
Morris, who spearheaded the project, said instructors at Morehouse sometimes struggle with capacity. They don’t have teaching assistants and can end up teaching concepts over and over again to meet students’ needs. The new virtual assistants can break down concepts conversationally, similar to what happens in office hours, and save instructors time. They can also engage students who may not like to reach out in traditional ways.
“I know students who will never ask a question all year, but what they will do is have a question in the middle of the night when they get to read up on it,” Morris said. “[The virtual assistant] is going to answer questions for them, and it’s not going to get tired, and it’s going to be available. And she’s warm and she’s cute like me.”
The launch of virtual assistants builds on a partnership with VictoryXR that started in 2021 when Morehouse piloted the world’s first metaversity. Metaversities are interactive, virtual learning spaces based on real or imagined schools. As with in-person courses, metaversity instructors must establish goals for students, plan lessons, select learning materials and assessments and research the latest real-world examples of their subject. Instructors then share these materials with VictoryXR, which uses them to train the new virtual assistants. This consists of creating avatars, scripting out some lessons, adding visuals and inputting information to answer students’ questions.
Morris said the process can be fun.
“You get to train a willing student, a student that wants the information dumped in them,” she said.
It also highlights a key tenet for Morris: Human intelligence drives artificial intelligence. While she understands and agrees with some overall skepticism around AI and immersive realities, she said the goal is to bring more humanity, not less, to students’ learning experience. With the understanding that students will inevitably use AI as a tool, she said, these virtual TAs can help ensure a human stays in the loop.
Since Morehouse does not currently have human teaching assistants, these avatars are not replacing anybody.
Looking forward, Morris hopes the TAs can help level the playing field in “weed out” classes, or classes with a high dropout rate, which are often STEM-related and not exclusive to Morehouse. For students without a background in those topics, she said the virtual assistant could help them catch up. She also hopes the model will prove useful in humanities courses, where traditional generative AI chatbots can lack nuance.
If students can get help on their own time, in their own ways, Morris said the impact could be far reaching. It could improve graduation rates, diversify the workforce and accommodate students with different abilities.
“This is just a peek into what’s in store. I believe education can be transformed to give students an authentic and informed decision about what they’re learning,” she said. “I think if we can personalize the learning a little bit more fully for them, it will matter.”
