We are thrilled to announce that a collab between The Plant and members of the FASoS Student Reps is one of the three finalists in EDLAB’s AppChallenge! Our idea is simple: an AI-powered chatbot to help students retrieve crucial but often ‘hidden’ information about their curriculum, the UM, or simply about a course. Our suggested app is called ApareciUM, after the ‘revealing charm’ used in the Harry Potter book series to force invisible ink or other hidden messages to appear!

The App: 

The basic idea behind the app is that many students find it hard to locate and retrieve information relevant to their studies and well-being (e.g., due to multiple and often non-user-friendly platforms, or information systems that require users to search top-down rather than bottom-up). At the same time, staff highlighted that they often have to respond to repetitive queries about deadlines, evaluation criteria, homework assignments, and other teaching and learning tasks, that are already included in course syllabi and Canvas.

ApareciUM will leverage the capabilities of an on-premises open-source Large Language Model (Llama 2) to provide meaningful responses to student queries about courses, curricula, student services and more, reducing the need for manual searches and improving overall efficiency for both students and academic and/or support staff. 

A compass, not an oracle:

The main goal of the app is to help students find the information they need by pointing them in the right direction and providing the right information where possible. That means that–in line with PBL principles of the UM–the app should function as a compass in the ‘information jungle’, rather than as an all-knowing oracle. 

Our mock-up app: