Learning smarter with AI: from tool to reflection partner
The use of AI by students has become an integral part of education. Instead of banning it, the “GenAI in education” pilot project is investigating how AI can contribute to the learning process. Marco van Bommel, lecturer on the Economic and Consumer Psychology course, talks about their own AI chatbot YoCCo and their initial experiences.
Why did you start the “GenAI in education” pilot?
'The use of AI by students has become indispensable. Many students use tools such as ChatGPT when completing assignments that were not originally designed for this purpose. As a result, some learning objectives are more difficult to assess. With the “GenAI in education” pilots, we want to investigate how we can integrate AI into education in a responsible and didactically valuable way.'
So the aim is not to ban the use of AI?
'Certainly not. Instead of banning the use of AI, we want to use it to enhance the learning process. By developing our own AI agents, we can set clear guidelines and restrictions. Our own chatbot, YoCCo – which stands for Your Campaign Coach – is a good example of this. YoCCo does not write assignments for students, but works according to the Socratic method: it asks critical questions, encourages reflection and helps students to think more deeply about the material themselves. In this way, they ultimately arrive at their own well-founded campaign report.'
“Ban AI? No, we want to teach students how to use it wisely.”
What exactly does the pilot within the Economic and Consumer Psychology course entail?
'In this course, students work on an advertising campaign based on psychological literature. To support them in this, we developed YoCCo. He has been trained on the specific literature of the course and helps students with questions about theories or concepts. Not by providing answers, but by acting as a sparring partner. He helps students organise their thoughts and stimulates creativity and depth.'
How is YoCCo integrated into the course environment?
'YoCCo is fully integrated into Brightspace, our digital learning environment. Students can access it directly there, without having to log in or use an additional platform. It is also important that YoCCo does not store any personal data or conversation data – something that students themselves often mention as an important point. In addition, we have considered the ecological footprint of AI use. Sustainability is a topic that is important to students, so we take it seriously.'
How can students use it in practice?
‘It works very intuitively for students. They can use YoCCo in the same way they are used to with other AI chatbots: asking questions, exploring ideas, brainstorming about their campaign. The difference is that YoCCo is specifically tailored to this course. It knows the literature and refers to relevant sources. This also helps to combat the well-known problem of “hallucination”, where AI makes things up.’
What are the benefits for students?
'YoCCo helps students to better understand the subject matter and actively apply it. Through its way of asking questions, students learn to think critically, reflect and make better choices in their campaign design. And just as importantly, they learn to ask better questions. That is an underrated but essential academic skill. YoCCo guides the thinking process, making students more independent and giving them more ownership of their learning process. That fits perfectly with a level 400 course like this one.'
And what does it mean for you as a lecturer?
'Setting up YoCCo was surprisingly easy. The chatbot runs on ChatGPT technology and we received excellent support from the university. Colleagues Marc Cleiren and Julian van der Kraats did a lot of the groundwork. As lecturers, we mainly had to specify what the bot should be able to do and how it should communicate. The integration into Brightspace went smoothly, making it an accessible addition for both students and lecturers.'
What are the practical benefits for you?
'It gives us better insight into how students use AI in their learning process. And hopefully that will lead to stronger assignments in terms of content. That makes giving feedback not only more efficient, but also more meaningful. Ultimately, it contributes to the quality of learning and assessment.'
'I do notice that I regularly say to students: “This is a perfect question for YoCCo.” That pretty much says it all.'
Are there any areas for improvement?
'Certainly. Although initial reactions were positive, we noticed that usage declined after the first week. We also noticed that YoCCo sometimes provided too much explanation instead of asking questions – something we want to improve in future versions. Another point is that the bot does not store any data. This is deliberate, for privacy reasons, but it makes long-term interaction less practical. We still need to find a good balance in this regard.'
How do you look back on this first pilot?
'All in all, it was a successful first trial. YoCCo shows that GenAI can really add value to the learning process. At the same time, it is clear that further development is needed to make its use sustainable and effective. The pilot is linked to ongoing research into AI use among students. The results of this research should help us to use AI even better and more responsibly in education.'