Joel Roy, Bachelor of Arts, Psychology Honours ’24, knew that traditional, lecture-based approaches to education didn’t work for him, so he set out to find ways to shift his studying style to meet his own needs.

When generative artificial intelligence (AI) like ChatGPT became widely available a couple of years ago, he wondered if it could be used to help students like himself, who prefer more active learning styles.

“What's amazing about AI is that it can respond immediately,” says Roy. He notes that research has shown that that immediate feedback provides better learning opportunities than waiting to receive graded work back. “I've been using ChatGPT to help me study for exams by just having it quiz me over and over again.”

To get the AI to ask relevant, topical questions, Roy fed some course content into it, then prompted the tech to generate potential exam questions. He used his findings as proof of concept, and paired them with a literature review in order to create a poster presentation for Student Research Day 2024.

His presentation focused on potential uses of AI for faculty, from developing different types of exam questions to condensing broad topics into shorter reading exercises.

In his experience, AI is also helpful in breaking down harder concepts in more digestible ways.

“ChatGPT is so good at explaining things in different ways,” Roy says. “If you don't quite understand something, you can ask it to explain it in simpler terms.”

It’s a strategy he’s still employing as he pursues his master’s degree in applied behaviour analysis. And as the tech updates and improves so do the outputs he’s able to get when looking for study help.

“I created a specific study bot that generated multiple choice questions and short answers. It progressed with harder questions as I went on, and also did short reviews of material whenever I got a question wrong,” he says. Once he put in the source content and adjusted the bot’s behaviours, it became a study resource he could return to at any time.

Once he’s finished his own studies, he’s hoping to work as a behaviour analyst and instructor, and implement his findings into his own classroom – both to help students like himself learn material in new ways and to ensure that students can use those tools without breaking the bank on expensive textbooks.

“I’m interested in having an AI model designated to a university, that professors could use to curate academic articles and information the model should know, and that students can use without having to buy a textbook,” he says. “The AI has the knowledge, students can interact with it based on their courses, and it's easily accessible.”

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