Members of UD's Academic Technology Services team, from left to right: Kelly Cross; Joe Naccarato, AS00, AS04; Jevonia (Nova) Harris, EG01, Rafi Turitz-Sweifach, BE22, 24M; Erin Sicuranza, AS95, EHD99M; and Ryan Eagan, EOE23. Photo by Kathy Atkinson.

Hitting the (AI) Books

UD staff help Blue Hens navigate the AI landscape

Chris Vito November 25, 2024

Could artificial intelligence create new learning tools? That’s the question that sparked an innovative Blue Hen project—and a collaboration with Amazon.

For years, undergraduates seeking academic support have been limited to sitting outside a professor’s door during designated office hours or signing up for campus tutoring. While these options remain intact, UD’s Academic Technology Services (ATS) team sought to increase access any time, for anyone.

Enter UD StudyAiDE, a forthcoming tool that builds off UD’s vast digital academic resources, including archived video files and text transcripts from more than 300,000 classes. Partnering with Amazon Web Services, UD has developed from these recordings digital flashcards, study guides, practice quizzes and more.

“Our project started as an idea for using new, exciting technologies to transform data we already have into something our students and faculty would find valuable,” says ATS Director Erin Sicuranza.

UD StudyAiDE is a forthcoming tool that builds off UD’s vast digital academic resources, including archived video files and text transcripts from more than 300,000 classes.

Over the past year, she and Jevonia Harris, who leads the ATS educational software engineering team, have delivered presentations about the AI-powered project for peers from Cornell to Carnegie Mellon. In May, for an audience of nearly 100 universities, they shared an interactive demonstration alongside Jan Poston Day, EOE91, who serves as higher education community manager at Amazon Web Services.

“We didn’t just want this project to align with the strategic goals of our University,” Harris says. “We also wanted to have an impact on ‘what could be’ across higher education.”

A spirit of critical inquiry is what libraries are all about. -Meg Grotti
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This isn’t the only bit of tech wizardry across UD. Blue Hen librarians are helping students navigate the AI landscape in myriad ways. For starters, they consulted on the UDStudyAiDE project and put together an AI survival kit for walking undergraduates (or any member of the public) through the basics: How do you fact-check AI? How should you cite its output?

Additionally, UD librarians have launched a chatbot pilot called UDstax to answer—at any hour—frequently asked questions about navigating library webpages and procedures. When a human is required for trickier research-related queries, the chatbot directs users to a real-life librarian, helping students better understand the bounds of machine-made intelligence. Throughout the year, the library team also hosts workshops on a range of topics, from using image generators to effective prompt engineering for generative tools. “Approaching information technologies and knowledge production with a spirit of critical inquiry is what libraries are all about,” says Meg Grotti, assistant head of instructional services. “I’ve never seen a time when library expertise is more needed than now, and I’m so excited about the possibilities.”