Faculty Win Provost Office Grants for Teaching & Learning
Four proposals from Columbia Engineering faculty have been awarded the 2024 Teaching and Learning grants from the Office of the Provost. These grants support innovative projects related to Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), Large-Scale Teaching & Learning, and Innovative Course Design.
Among the exciting projects funded this year is the development of Curiously™, an advanced AI learning companion designed to enhance the educational experience. Curiously™, created using the latest generative AI technology, aims to provide personalized support to students by addressing conceptual questions and programming challenges in real-time.
The Provost Office grants are given annually to enable faculty to implement new educational methods and technologies in their classrooms. The Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) supports the faculty recipients with resources and services including content development, instructional design, media production, assessment, and project management, alongside the grant funding.
Read about the winning proposal: Massive Open Online Course - Generative AI for Business
Team: Hardeep Johar, senior lecturer in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research; Shu-Yi Hsu, senior instructional designer at Columbia+; and Yipu Zheng, Instructional Technology & Media program, Teachers College
The team plans to deploy Curiously™ for the IEOR E4526 Analytics on the Cloud course. This AI Learning Companion will be trained using transcripts from recorded lectures, course materials, Ed discussion discussions, and publicly available articles. The grant funds will help assess Curiously™’s impact on student engagement and learning outcomes, as well as its ability to collaborate effectively with the teaching team, including the instructor and human TAs.
Curiously™ will be utilized for both an online course (launching in June 2024) offered by Columbia Plus, Columbia University's online learning platform, and an in-person course (launching in September 2024) at Columbia Engineering.
By integrating Curiously™ into these courses, the project aims to improve student support in navigating complex concepts and programming tasks related to distributed data sets, multi-core machines, and functional programming in Scala. The research will evaluate Curiously’s effectiveness in enhancing student engagement and learning outcomes and its potential to collaborate with the teaching team.
Access original full article here: Faculty Win Provost Office Grants for Teaching & Learning (https://www.engineering.columbia.edu/news/faculty-win-provost-office-grants-teaching-learning)
Ready to see how Curiously™ can elevate your classroom? Request a demo today and discover how personalized learning at scale can become a reality for your students!
