In recent months, a range of journal and news articles featuring Harvard’s AI Tutors have touted the effectiveness of AI tutorbots in fields like physics, accounting, and statistics. Harvard’s AI tutor studies have found that students achieve greater academic success and engagement with personal tutorbots that can generate practice problems and questions or coach students through cases and scenarios from disciplinary or real-world perspectives.
Instructors who would like to take advantage of the benefits of AI tutors (without the time-consuming work of building, training, and testing their own bots) can turn to a range of sources for ready-to-launch AI tutors for students.
General Tutors Students Can Access
- AI Tutor Pro by Contact Nord is our favorite tutorbot. It has three modes: grow knowledge, check knowledge, and discuss knowledge. Students can identify their subject and academic level and enjoy prompting and questioning from the AI tutor in one of eight common languages. At the end of the chat, students may opt to receive a summary of their strengths and areas for further study.
- ChatGPT.Edu has launched its Study Mode for a built-in tutoring support. Login to ChatGPT.Edu with your USC Upstate single sign on through the Spartan Hub to access your protected, full ChatGPT account. In the chat prompt type “Turn on Study Mode,” and ChatGPT Study Mode will coach students to work through problems step-by-step rather than giving out complete answers.
Custom Tutors Instructors Can Build
For instructors who make a free account, AI Faculty Assistant for AI Tutor Pro allows instructors to create their own custom AI tutor trained on OpenStax textbook materials or faculty materials you load into the AI on your own (See AI Faculty Assistant Privacy Policy). Instructors generate a private link to their custom tutor, which can be shared with students in their course.
The AI Conversation assignment tool in Blackboard can also be used to create focused tutoring or coaching experiences at key points in the term. Set up your AI Conversation with a tutoring role play scenario targeting a specific learning experience for your course.
- Design your AI persona as a peer tutor with experience in the detailed course topics you are covering. Or create an academic coach with expertise in study skills and metacognition or a supportive graduate teaching assistant in your discipline who challenges students to expand and develop their ideas.
- Although instructors cannot upload content into the AI at this time, they can encourage tutoring about the learning process needed to study the course content. Invite students to work with the AI persona to draft a paper thesis or outline, develop study skills for an upcoming test, plan a project, or strategize a group assignment.
Google’s NotebookLM now offers a Learning Guide mode that enables instructors to upload or link to relevant materials, create audio or video resources and mindmaps, then share their notebook link with students as a Learning Guide. Students can listen to a podcast-style discussion of course materials, explore flashcards and quizzes, or chat with a tutorbot designed to coach them through ideas step-by-step. NotebookLM has a free plan for individuals, but added features require premium subscriptions.
AI Tutors from Publishers and Library Databases
Many textbook publishers and research databases offer their own AI tutoring and guidance within ebook or database sites.
For textbooks, Pearson, McGraw Hill, Macmillan, and VitalSource all offer coaching or tutoring AI bots embedded in a growing list of their ebooks. Students can see an AI icon while reading their textbook to start a practice session or quiz themselves on what they read.
Library databases such as JSTOR and Proquest offer AI assistants to coach students through the research process. The AI research assistants can suggest additional search terms and offer lists of concepts in selected articles or chapters from ebooks in the library collection. In the coming months even more library platforms and databases will be integrating AI assistants to enable natural language searching and to help streamline research for students.
Bonus Tip
Listen to a Harvard University faculty member describe their AI Tutor prompts in the YouTube video below.