AI textbooks and chatbots are already changing the way students learn. Should they? [Video]

Whenever Queen’s University student Ava Ansari struggles with a multiple choice question on an assignment, an AI chat window immediately pops up on the side of her screen. 

“It’s almost as if I have my own personal teacher sitting with me,” said Ansari of the artificial intelligence tool that’s built into her digital textbook. 

Ansari was involved with beta testing the AI chatbot last year as a student ambassador for textbook publisher Pearson Education. She’s one of many testers for the AI tools that will become part of the curriculum at over 100 Canadian universities and colleges this fall. 

“If I were to get a question wrong, instead of just giving me kind of a standard little piece of feedback, it really goes into depth and says, ‘This is why, exactly, you got it wrong. This is how we can understand the topic differently.'”

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