IRIS, the intelligent virtual tutor integrated into Artemis and based on Generative AI and Large Language Models, was recently featured in an article published by the Süddeutsche Zeitung and in the 8.th edition of the Mindshift Magazine. The articles present the concept behind the development of IRIS and highlight the capability of IRIS to be a virtual tutor for university courses.
The Süddeutsche Zeitung published an article titled “Hilfe ja - Lösung nein” about the challenges that the development of a learning chatbot like IRIS poses. Considering that IRIS is used on courses with more than 2000 students and that the tutors are not able to provide individual support to all students, a learning chatbot like IRIS can be very valuable for the students and tutors. The implementation of the chatbot should however be done carefully, in order to offer a learning experience that is on par with the one provided by human tutors. Because of this, the focus of the article is on the learning concept behind IRIS, which is based on the idea of helping the students to learn by themselves and on how IRIS implements this concept of learning psychology into its answers. This is achieved by designing the chatbot so that it provides relevant information for solving problems and carefully guiding the students towards the solution, without providing the solution itself. Through this approach, the students are encouraged to think critically and will learn more effectively, as they are actively involved in the learning process.
Meanwhile, the 8th edition of the Mindshift magazine also featured IRIS in an article. The article, titled “Why not ask Iris?”, presents the concept behind IRIS and how it is used as a virtual tutor for university courses. It also mentions the fact that IRIS guides the students through the learning process instead of directly providing the solutions, and features an interview with Prof. Krusche about the development of IRIS. Another point highlighted is the fact that IRIS should help students that might otherwise have issues communicating all their questions to the tutors; after all, it’s hard asking questions in lecture halls with hundreds of students.
Additionally, the TUM Corporate and Communications Center also recently published an article about IRIS. The article, titled “Chatbot Iris offers individual support”, presents the success of the implementation of IRIS at TUM and how it is helping students to learn more effectively. It also features the results of a study conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of IRIS as a virtual tutor for computer science education, which determined IRIS to be an “excellent tutor”.
- Stephan Krusche and Patrick Bassner at the presentation of IRIS in Milan
These articles were published after a presentation of IRIS at this year’s ACM conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE ‘24), held in Milan by Patrick Bassner, Eduard Frankford and Stephan Krusche. The paper is available online for free and can be accessed below:
Iris: An AI-Driven Virtual Tutor for Computer Science Education.
Patrick Bassner,
Eduard Frankford, and
Stephan Krusche.
29th Annual Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education
(ITiCSE
)
.
Milan, Italy,
July
2024.