We are pleased to relay that the LearnWise pilot has now kicked off, with 15 colleges and universities (listed below) participating from October to December 2024.
LearnWise is an AI-powered platform designed to streamline students’ access to support services. From answering queries on how to submit assignments to offering guidance on course enrollment, LearnWise aims to make students’ lives easier whilst allowing institutions to gain deeper insights into what is driving user queries and where there are gaps in the support and content they have access to. Through the platform, more complex queries are escalated to the relevant staff teams, ensuring students receive efficient, personalised assistance.
By conducting the pilot, we want to understand how AI assistants aid their users, while improving support and content management workflows at an institutional level.
Background to the pilot
The AI team at Jisc has long been interested in chatbots and AI assistants. Back in 2021 and with the support of Bolton College, we piloted a Q&A chatbot across multiple colleges, exploring its benefits for both students and staff. The chatbot certainly had value. Students enjoyed engaging with the chatbot, and staff recognised its potential in streamlining their workflows. That said, the effort needed to set up and administer the bot was intensive (curating and updating content was particularly labourious). And the accuracy, whilst good, was not quite sufficient for users who require highly reliable information at pace.
Fast forward to the present day and the technology has made significant progress. Chatbots and AI assistants now tend to utilise large language models (such as Gemini and GPT), and the process of training them on an institute’s content is often as easy as uploading key documents, inputting webpage links and/or connecting to authenticated content repositories like MicroSoft Sharepoint. Motivated by this progress, we started exploring the range of chatbot and AI assistant platforms available, with a view to launching a new pilot.
LearnWise was our preferred platform. The platform responded to user queries with accurate, contextualised and easy-to-understand answers. And the team behind the platform were highly appreciative of the tertiary education context, having built a product that was tailored to the sector’s needs.
Examples of LearnWise in action
Many participants have already begun implementing LearnWise. Here are some examples of how it’s been put to use.
CPD SharePoint Site Integration
One institution integrated LearnWise within their CPD SharePoint site, using the AI assistant to help staff navigate professional development resources. Over 180 conversations have been logged with more than 890 queries being responded to. And 98% of the conversations have been resolved satisfactorily.
See below for an example of how LearnWise looks in SharePoint
Canvas VLE Induction Course
Another institution deployed LearnWise on their induction courses in Canvas, the institution’s Learning Management System. The assistant has been actively engaged, with over 800 conversations recorded so far at a 98% resolution rate. By helping new students navigate courses, submit assignments, and access support services, the hope is that the assistant will help alleviate the workload of teaching staff in providing immediate answers to routine and often repetitive queries. The platform’s successes in supporting these induction courses have led the participant to actively explore expanding the use of LearnWise across the institution.
See below for an example of how LearnWise can look in Canvas VLE
Student Support in Canvas VLE
In this use case, the assistant has supported over 300 conversations aimed at helping first-year students and returning students, adjust to College life, achieving an impressive 100% resolution rate. By guiding students through the complexities of College platforms and services, LearnWise could become a valuable tool for improving signposting to wider College services, therefore reducing first-year anxieties and streamlining support. This allows College staff to more confidently refer students to Canvas, which can free up valuable time to address wider issues.
LearnWise and ExploreAI
Jisc itself will be piloting LearnWise over the next couple of months. The AI assistant sits on our ExploreAI page, and be able to answer members’ queries about the work we’re doing on AI at Jisc, AI advice and guidance, and many other topics linked to AI. You can read about the project, or try the assistant out for yourself.
Pilot Participants
Bath Spa University
City College Plymouth
East Surrey College
Gloucestershire College
Kirklees College
Liverpool John Moores University
Neath College, NPTC Group of Colleges
Northern Regional College
Nottingham College
Roehampton University
Shipley College
South Staffordshire College
The City of Liverpool College
University of Westminster
Weston College
Next steps
After the pilot concludes in December, we’ll be evaluating perceptions of LearnWise through surveys and focus groups. After distilling insights, we’ll then publish a report and make a decision on how we can support the sector to benefit from LearnWise.
In the meantime, if you have any questions about the pilot, please reach out to us at ai@jisc.ac.uk
Find out more by visiting our Artificial Intelligence page to view publications and resources, join us for events and discover what AI has to offer through our range of interactive online demos.
For regular updates from the team sign up to our mailing list.
Get in touch with the team directly at AI@jisc.ac.uk
