Google Cloud and Walden U. create a chatbot that writes its own quizzes

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Walden University, a for-profit online college, and Google Cloud recently tested an AI-powered chatbot designed to serve as an online tutor that writes its own student progress assessments.

In a demonstration Monday, Walden leaders showed how the chatbot, which they called “Julian,” produces simple multiple-choice questions and challenges students with short-written answers. The software scans students’ phrasing for accuracy and helps make notes online through machine learning.

Steven Tom, head of transformation for the Minneapolis-based school, said the bot assists instructors by automating on-demand assessments, which are typically integrated into courses to assess students’ progress in mastering certain concepts or skills.

By creating an online tool that can provide immediate feedback, the software allows students to check their progress as they wish, he said.

“We wanted to apply Julian to non-binary topics, not just right and wrong, like math and science, but also to topics like social work, psychology, counseling areas where interpretation and feedback around that mastery they’re really important, “Tom said.” And we wanted to do it in a way that didn’t require us to write it and be able to do it on a large scale so that we could deliver it across Walden’s 100+ programs. “

Walden is working exclusively with Google Cloud on the project and has so far applied the bot to his social work and childhood education pathways. Students first select a concept or module to test and choose the types of questions they want to answer. The instructors don’t guide the bot’s answers, but the review questions and key concepts are worked out through machine learning for accuracy. The notes feature of the software invites students to highlight critical ideas directly from the course material and then check what they have highlighted.

A team from Walden University’s IT department worked directly with Google to design and build the software, said Karthik Venkatesh, the school’s CIO, during the demonstration. The presence of Google Cloud makes maintenance easier, but a smaller IT group is still needed to manage operations, he said.

“The need for scale was very important,” Venkatesh said. “We really wanted to make sure that, from a university perspective, this was a tool or platform that added value by generating speed.”

While Google Cloud doesn’t focus solely on online education with technology initiatives like the “Julian” chatbot, “the initial traction was in that space,” said Lukman Ramsey, a Google executive.

“We’re seeing the same things the rest of the industry is seeing where online education is becoming more and more of a base, which means that mainstream or field schools are also adding online additions pretty quickly,” Ramsey said. “So there’s nothing really specific online about this technology, which means it could be used by an online school like Walden or you know, even a traditional school in the field.”

Colleges and universities are increasingly looking to AI for administrative tasks and for analyzing huge amounts of data, freeing human workers. Many universities are adopting chatbots as a website concierge that answer basic questions and direct students to resources.

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