Students and faculty in several of Colorado State University’s online programs will begin using “intelligent tutoring” technology in courses this fall.

This comes as CSU Online announced last week a new partnership with Cognii, Inc., a leading provider of Artificial Intelligence-based educational technology. CSU faculty and instructional designers will work with Cognii to develop learning and assessment tools powered by Cognii’s Virtual Learning Assistant, which is designed to improve students’ learning outcomes, increase instructors’ productivity, and enable high-quality personalized education at a large scale.

“The use of Cognii in the classroom is expected to improve learning outcomes, turning assessment into learning while enhancing the effectiveness of the time our faculty devote to teaching,” said Mike Palmquist, CSU’s Associate Provost for Instructional Innovation. “Through this partnership, CSU is on the cutting edge of recent research and innovation in the fields of natural language processing, cognitive sciences, and machine learning, and an example of how the University is taking bold steps toward transforming access to quality education.”

Dee Kanejiya, CEO and founder of Cognii said, “We are delighted to partner with CSU, which is a leader in innovative online education. Virtual assistants and chatbot technologies are today enhancing our lives in many different spheres and have the potential to significantly improve education. Through this partnership, we are looking forward to bringing the benefits of AI to education and training.”

Students in two online undergraduate courses in Human Development and Family Studies and Psychology and one online graduate course in Industrial/Organizational Psychology will use this new approach to cognitive tutoring. The final learning and assessment tools will be developed based on the pedagogical strategies and goals of CSU combined with the research and technology of Cognii.