U-M Maizey Lets You Build a Teaching Assistant AI in Minutes

Introduction

Greetings! I'm Andrew Woo, a faculty member here at Ross. In the past few months, we've been collaborating with the ITGen team to deploy, refine, and rigorously test the UN Maizey platform. Long story short, this user-friendly interface allows our faculty members to build their own teaching assistant AIs for their courses in just a few minutes.

If you've seen ChatGPT in action, imagine an even smarter version tailored specifically for your needs. Maizey has been specifically trained using your own course materials. With just a click of a button, Maizey can enroll in your Canvas site and absorb the materials there into a structured knowledge base. It then taps into that knowledge base to answer student questions.

For example, consider a scenario where a student asks a question about last week's case in my fintech class. Behind the scenes, Maizey first retrieves the content relevant to the question, and then, using the power of the GPT engine, it synthesizes that course material into a clear, direct answer in natural language. Essentially, by using Maizey, you merge the best of ChatGPT with your own course content to provide real-time answers to student inquiries—24/7.

Customization is a key feature of Maizey. You can adjust how it answers questions without any coding knowledge; just give it instructions in your own language. Much like ChatGPT, Maizey decodes your requests and follows them when generating responses. If you utilize the lecture capture system, Maizey can even direct your students to the most relevant segments of your course videos.

Our field testing has shown that Maizey can provide a good or excellent answer—rated by human instructors—for 94% of the diverse quantitative and qualitative test questions. In contrast, ChatGPT achieves this only 74% of the time or lower.

We have rolled out Maizey to thousands of students across several core classes at the university. Our frontline results indicate that Maizey serves effectively as a capable assistant in the classroom. With its photographic memory of course content, it smartly selects the right material for each question and uses the GPT engine to deliver high-quality responses that promote further learning. This development will hopefully free up your time and that of your TAs for more complex, hands-on questions.

As the winter semester approaches, now is an excellent time for you to integrate Maizey into your classrooms. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out—I'm here to help!

Keywords

Maizey, teaching assistant AI, course materials, ChatGPT, Canvas, custom responses, 24/7 student support, lecture capture system, qualitative test questions, quantitative test questions.

FAQ

Q: What is Maizey?
A: Maizey is a user-friendly platform that allows faculty members to create their own AI teaching assistants powered by their specific course materials.

Q: How does Maizey work with course content?
A: Maizey enrolls in your Canvas site, absorbs course materials into a structured knowledge base, and retrieves relevant content to answer student questions.

Q: Can instructors customize how Maizey answers questions?
A: Yes, instructors can customize Maizey's responses by giving it commands in natural language, without any coding required.

Q: How well does Maizey perform compared to ChatGPT?
A: In field tests, Maizey provided good or excellent answers for 94% of questions, outperforming ChatGPT, which achieved a success rate of 74% or lower.

Q: How can I integrate Maizey into my classroom?
A: Instructors can reach out for assistance with integrating Maizey into their courses as the winter semester approaches.