Teaching with AI Agents with Matthew Clemson, Isabelle Hesse, and Danny Liu

Share your thoughts about this episode as a text message. Cogniti is a tool developed at the University of Sydney that instructors can use to create custom AI chatbots ("agents") for use in their teaching. Cogniti makes it easy to create a special-purpose agent, invite students to interact with the agent, and have some visibility into how students are using the agent. I have a theory that in a few years, teaching-focused custom AI chatbots are going to be standard tools available to higher education instructors. I may be wrong about that, but if it turns out to be the case, it makes sense to start figuring out the affordances and limitations of these tools now.On this episode, I talk with Danny Liu, professor of educational technology at the University of Sydney and lead developer of Cogniti, about the tools origin and uses. Danny brought along a couple of University of Sydney colleagues who have been experimenting with the tool: Matthew Clemson, senior lecturer of biochemistry, and Isabelle Hesse, senior lecturer of English. We had a great conversation about the current and potential roles of custom chatbots in teaching and learning.Episode Resources·       Cogniti website·       Videos from the 2024 Cogniti Mini-Symposium·       Matthew Clemson’s faculty page·       Isabelle Hesse’s faculty page·       Danny Liu’s faculty page·       “Dr MattTabolism: An AI Assistant That Helps Me Help Students with Biochemistry” by Matthew Clemson, Minh Huynh, and Alice Huang·       “AI as a Research and Feedback Assistant in Essay Plans and Annotated Bibliographies” by Isabelle Hesse·       Are You a Witch?, a custom GPT by Marc Watkins·       “Structure Matters: Custom Chatbot Edition” by Derek BruffSupport the showPodcast Links:Order The Norton Guide to AI-Aware Teaching by Annette Vee, Marc Watkins, and Derek Bruff.Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the online and professional education association.Subscribe to the Intentional Teaching newsletter: https://derekbruff.ck.page/subscribeSupport Intentional Teaching on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/intentionalteachingFind me on LinkedIn and Bluesky.See my website for my "Agile Learning" blog and information about having me speak at your campus or conference.