Project Team
- Abdallah Mohamed, Associate Professor of Teaching, Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics and Statistics, Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science (Lead Applicant)
- Fatemeh Fard, Assistant Professor, Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics and Statistics, Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science
- Raymon Lawrence, Professor, Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics and Statistics, Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science
- Mostafa Mohamed, Lecturer, Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics and Statistics, Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science
Themes
- Artificial Intelligence
- Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion
- Experiential Learning
Year
2027
About the Project
This project aims to provide a platform accessible to instructors and students across UBCO to utilize generative AI in a safe, UBCO-compliant, and no-cost environment. This is achieved by advancing EduAI, a centralized service created within the Department of Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics, and Statistics (CMPS).
EduAI allows instructors and students to use AI effectively within their courses. It offers an infrastructure that connects course materials with AI tools to provide course-aware learning support. The vision is to establish a sustainable, pedagogically-driven framework that users across disciplines can rely on to make AI-enhanced teaching and learning more scalable, secure, accessible, and inclusive.
EduAI addresses a major challenge in educational innovation: while AI models (e.g., ChatGPT) are increasingly available, most instructors and students lack the infrastructure, technical expertise, or resources to connect them meaningfully and securely to course-specific content. To bridge this gap, EduAI provides a secure, UBCO-hosted environment that links course materials to AI models (locally hosted on UBCO servers). EduAI allows instructors to create course shells and upload teaching materials. These materials are processed through a retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) system, enabling context-aware learning-support grounded in relevant courseware.
This support is provided directly within EduAI or extended via its API. A working prototype is already deployed at https://eduai.ok.ubc.ca (viaUBCO-VPN), with API documentation and code available on GitHub, and several tools in development are using this API. ALT-2040 funding will enhance accessibility, usability, inclusion, and pedagogical-alignment through collaborative instructor-student design, cross-disciplinary implementations, and evaluation of impacts on teaching and learning.