Cana Fuest, PhD Candidate

I recently attended Cengage’s virtual event, Exploring GenAI in Higher Education. There were many interesting sessions, but the session which made the most lasting impression on me was Dr. Phillip Olla’s talk, BloomAI: Creating AI Prompts for Research and Learning. He explained how he had developed a model in ChatGPT4 that could assist him in developing assignments that enhance critical thinking for his students. His BloomAI can transfer content directly to Blackboard. I hope that eventually every educator has access to this kind of AI assistant! Just think of all the time it takes to create meaningful learning activities and assessments. I know that there have been many resources available for teachers on the internet in the last few decades to help with content for classes, but an AI resource that can assist in the creation of meaningful assignments would be a tremendous time-saver for all teachers.

In my own research so far, I consistently hit the roadblock of “pay this monthly fee for access to more of our features.” Unfortunately, ChatGPT4 is no exception. I am still hesitant to fork over money for this tool (although that might change in the next month or so as my PhD research continues). For now, I am still on the hunt for a model that has been trained like Dr. Olla’s model. I would love to try it out!