Chatbot Now Essential at Leading Institution

The University of Sydney’s ICT division started developing a large-language-model-as-a-service platform based on Microsoft Azure in late 2022.

To date the ICT team has built 33 or so viable products on its Azure platform and one of the most successful is Cogniti, an AI assistant for students, developed by Danny Liu, Associate Professor of Educational Innovation.

Cogniti allows teachers to create their own AI chatbot ‘agents’ that can be steered with specific instructions and resourced with specific contextual information from units of study. These agents can be embedded into the University’s learning management system.

Teachers have full visibility over conversations with Cogniti agents, and students can flag and give feedback on AI messages.

Using Cogniti, students can get instant, personalised support, guidance and feedback, including explanations of key concepts and coaching on study techniques. It can also boost staff productivity by helping teachers with time-consuming tasks such as creating rubrics to establish criteria for assessment.

Since Cogniti’s soft launch in October 2023, educators from 30 institutions in Australia, New Zealand and Singapore have created more than 600 AI agents using the solution. These AI agents have engaged in over 31,500 conversations with more than 10,000 users and answered thousands of syllabus and content questions.

Cogniti has also improved personalised feedback for thousands of students, including those who used Cogniti agents during a workshop to develop occupational therapy intervention plans in the University’s Faculty of Medicine and Health.

“I thought the AI was very good,” says one student. “There was a balance between challenging our suggestions that encourages us to think and back up our ideas and affirming our suggestions with add-ons that improve the strategy delivery.”

Cogniti is currently used across 300 units of study and the University expects this number to double by the end of 2024.

Another successful project on the University’s Azure platform is the generative AI policy navigator developed by the University’s Digital Innovation team. This tool, built using Microsoft’s public sector Information Assistant accelerator, simplifies staff access to the university’s 360 policies.