Academic Text Helper is meant to help undergraduate students in the College of Arts and Sciences, particularly those who struggle to navigate highly analytical or complex academic materials, who often lack accessible tools that help them build strong comprehension skills. Many students find it difficult to synthesize dense readings, generate meaningful questions, or connect course concepts in ways that prepare them for discussions, assignments, and exams, which can leave them feeling overwhelmed or unprepared and limit their ability to apply these skills beyond the classroom.
Our artifact addresses this challenge by offering an AI supported reflective learning tool designed to guide students through more structured, intentional, and engaging ways of interacting with difficult texts. Rather than replacing the reading process, the tool serves as a starting point that encourages students to explore the material more deeply before turning to lecture slides, videos, or other academic resources.
By prompting students to think critically, reflect on key ideas, and build connections, the artifact supports more confident and meaningful engagement with academic sources and can ultimately strengthen comprehension for any learner facing complex materials.
Instructions:
- Individuals should open the artifact and input a prompt that can vary but be under the lines of “I need help with this academic material for clarification and better understanding”.
- The artifact will then ask the individual to share their source, preferred learning style, and familiarity level with the academic material.
- The individual will share their source and begin reading outputs and answering knowledge checks as generated by AI that cover a series of processes including summaries/outlines, concept explanations, reflections and connections across ideas.
- Throughout this process, the individual will be answering questions and responding to AI to show a better understanding of the material.
- After this process of prompting, the artifact will provide a personalized study guide. It will then ask the student if they would like additional resources such as downloadable documents or outside sources to get a more comprehensive understanding of the academic material.
Sydni Friedman - Major: Media Advertising
Mariela Bugarin - Major: Political Science
Nanichi Signore-Flores - Major: Anthropology
Jesus Barajas Villalpando - Major: Philosophy and Religious Studies
Description of the video:
In the Gen.AI
Student Ambassador Program, my name
is Nanichi Flores. My name is
Mariela Bugarin. My name is
Sydni Friedmann. My name is Jesus Barajas. Many students struggle
to engage with complex or dense
materials in a meaningful and insightful way.
Without the extra support of personalized
digital tools, course concepts may
be difficult for students to
synthesize, generate meaningful questions,
and connect concepts. As a result, students
may feel discouraged, overwhelmed, or unprepared
for discussions, assignments, or exams,
and importantly, have difficulty
applying it outside of the classroom despite
the necessary skills the course may give
for a chosen field. This targets undergraduate
students enrolled in the College of Arts
and Sciences program who often face
difficulty when it comes to tackling highly
analytical and complex academic materials and
who don't have proper comprehension practice
to their disposal. This artifact is an
AI reflective learning tool designed to
support undergraduate students in the
College of Arts and Sciences to better
engage with these dense or complex academic
materials. The purpose of the tool would
be to guide students through a more
structured and reflective ways of thinking and
engaging with their materials in order
to get a better understanding of the
source at hand through a series of steps
and knowledge checks. In this example, the
student is working with Plato's Allegory of
the Cave. The student provides the source
material, the familiarity with the topic and
their preferred learning style. In this case,
the student already has some familiarity
with Plato and prefers simplified explanations.
From there, the AI follows a structured
learning workflow in the background. First,
it creates a simplified summary and outline
of the text. Then, instead of immediately
giving interpretations, it asks the student
reflective questions to check understanding
and encourage active participation. As the
conversation continues, the tool adapts the
students responses it explains concepts
more deeply asks follow-up questions and
encourages the student to connect the ideas
to real life examples such as social
media education and identity the goal the
goal is not memorization but helping the student
reflect more behind the scenes the prompt
uses uses a structured sequence that guides
the interaction step by step it includes
it includes rules that prevent the AI
from skipping steps requires students
participation before moving forward, encourage
explanation in the students' own words,
and then redirect the conversation back to
the workflow if the students ask unrelated
follow-up questions. We also tested this tool in different scenarios. Through prompt
refinement and iteration, we adjusted the system
to balance structure, flexibility, and
meaningful engagement. The final result is
a learning companion that supports reflection, understanding, and
responsible academic use of AI, rather
than simplifying or producing assignment
-ready answers. Through this, we
hope that students are encouraged to
explore this artifact as a first tool
before utilizing other academic tools,
such as course lecture slides or
video audio artifacts. The intended usage
would be a comprehensive and insightful academic
tool for undergraduate students to learn
and thoughtfully engage with their
academic work. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
