CSU and Cognii partner to bring AI technology to online student education

Monday May 23, 2016 0 comments Tags: Fort Collins, CSU, Cognii, Mike Palmquist, Dan Kanejiya

FORT COLLINS -- Colorado State University and Cognii Inc., a leading provider of artificial intelligence-based educational technologies, announced a partnership with CSU faculty working with Cognii to develop a new learning and assessment experience, powered by Cognii’s Virtual Learning Assistant (VLA) technology.

Cognii’s VLA uses conversational AI and Natural Language Processing technologies to engage students via intelligent tutoring, providing instant assessment of students’ open-response answers along with a qualitative natural language feedback that guides them towards conceptual mastery.

Cognii allows an alternative to multiple choice tests, especially important for courses in humanities and social sciences. The VLA is designed to improve students’ knowledge retention and learning outcomes, increase instructors’ productivity and enable high-quality personalized education at a large scale.

Students at CSU will use the Cognii-powered virtual tutorials this fall in two online undergraduate courses in Human Development and Family Studies and Psychology and one online graduate course in Industrial/Organizational Psychology.

The tutorials will be developed collaboratively by CSU faculty and instructional designers who will partner with the technologists at Cognii to develop this new approach to cognitive tutoring.

The final learning-and-assessment tools will be unique and be developed based on the pedagogical strategies and goals of CSU combined with the research and technology of Cognii.

“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, associate provost for Instructional Innovation at CSU.

“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.”

“We are delighted to partner with CSU, which is a leader in innovative online education,” said Dan Kanejiya, Cognii’s founder and CERO.

“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.”