Wiley and the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University (ASU) are collaborating to develop a new generative AI-powered tutor designed to help students succeed in their online computer science labs.
MORE NEWS: ASU takes top spot in innovation for 10th year in a row
The purpose of the new AI tutor, now in pilot research phase, is to provide feedback to students who have hit a barrier in their zyBooks coding lab, helping them get back on track so they can successfully complete the lab. The tutor doesn’t give students the answers; rather, it gives them hints and tips to help them see where they may have gone wrong so they can try again.
Wiley hopes the tutor will encourage students to learn better by overcoming challenges and obstacles—a process known as “productive struggle.”
The Wiley and ASU teams completed the first phase of the pilot study this past summer in an introductory computer programming course. The conclusion: While improvements are needed, the AI tutor is promising. It helps students grasp the material and earns favorable reactions from students and instructors.
“Our goal in developing this AI tutor was to provide students with real-time, personalized support tailored to their learning needs,” said Ryan Meuth, an assistant teaching professor in the School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence, one of the schools in the Fulton Schools of Engineering at ASU. “By leveraging AI, we can offer students a resource that reinforces key concepts and helps them solve computer science problems at their own pace. The zyBooks AI tutor allows us to provide immediate guidance to students wherever and whenever they are working.”
The Wiley and ASU teams are working closely together on the AI tutor, with ASU instructors monitoring the results and providing feedback to Wiley’s research and creative team, who then make adjustments in the tutor to correct issues and improve performance.
“Wiley’s philosophy is to prove the efficacy of our products through research before we release them widely to customers,” said Lyssa Vanderbeek, Wiley group vice president for courseware. “ASU is a perfect partner for Wiley in this project because we both embrace innovation, research-based decisions, and student success.”
The next phase of the pilot study will measure how well the tutor helps students successfully complete the online labs, using a control group and a research group. That segment of the research will be completed in early 2025, with results expected to be available in late spring.
zyBooks are Wiley’s fully interactive online learning courseware solutions designed to empower student engagement and success through animations, learning questions, auto-graded challenge activities, and integrated tools, while zyLabs are online labs embedded within zyBooks courses designed to help computer programming students learn coding skills in a realistic, professional environment.
