Veteran UQAM professor Antonello Callimaci, who says he has never shied away from technology, recently introduced a novel learning aid that some of his accounting students are raving about.
“I thought that it was a genius idea from the teacher,” student Nadine El-Nabouche told Global News.
The tool is a teaching assistant that Callimaci named Bobby that students say they find very reliable, because unlike most TAs, Bobby is available 24-7.
It’s no wonder. He exists in cyberspace.
“Basically, it’s powered by ChatGPT, but I fed it all my documents,” the professor said. “I have over 300 documents that comprises my class.”
The tool, a conversational agent, is able to answer students’ questions about course material, solve problems, generate practice quizzes and even make suggestions to test the students’ knowledge – all based on Callimaci’s own course material.
“So, basically, Bobby is an expert in my class as much as I am,” Callimaci smiled.
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The tool’s main advantage is that students can get answers to questions when they can’t reach him outside of school hours.
“It makes it a lot easier for us,” El-Nabouche said. “Sometimes we study in the evenings and on the weekends and we don’t want to bother the teacher.”
The use of artificial intelligence in the classroom in general is controversial, and people like Renee Sieber, an associate professor in the department of geography who studies AI ethics, have concerns.
She wonders about the wisdom of using the technology in schools.
“I just wish we’d put a pause on it, and stop playing with this shiny toy,” she said, pointing out that classroom use of AI in some cases can be a slippery slope.
“That you’ll think that you don’t need teachers anymore, especially at the university level, where we’re supposed to be thinking critically.”
Callimaci stresses that in his case, the conversational agent does not replace him, and that his role as a teacher remains — to guide students and solve problems in ways that Bobby cannot.
He also notes there’s a prompt at the end of Bobby’s answers for students to contact him for more information.
Student Stéphanie Petit agrees that Bobby is no substitute for her prof.
“It’s different because, when you come in class, it completes what you already learned (using the agent),” she said, explaining that Callimaci also fills in gaps in the information his tool provides.
Simon Blanchette, who teaches in the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill and specializes in AI, agrees that tools like Bobby can be valuable — it just depends on how they’re used.
“AI is cool, AI is here to stay, but AI is also raising important concerns, ” he said. “I think we need guardrails at the university level, industry level. But we also need to start legislating a bit more around AI. Another thing that’s going to be important is digital, but also basic literacy.”
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