In a first-of-its-kind funding, Melissa Brooks, Associate Professor and Program Head of Paralegal Studies at Reynolds Community College, was awarded a teaching innovation grant for her proposal to use Artificial Intelligence. She will use grant funds to enhance online learning in the college’s two-year, American Bar Association-approved paralegal degree program.
Brooks will be doing this using virtual robots, each with their own avatar, voice, set of mannerisms, and environment. The bots speak more than 120 languages and are fully customizable.
A developing interest in AI
Brooks’ interest in artificial intelligence began years ago at Reynolds, in 2016. In a class lesson on how the stock market works, she assigned students to research and come up with good companies to invest in. She had a few gamers in the class who found a company, Nvidia, that was making computer chips for virtual reality video games, and they invested to see what it would do. Shares were around $15 then. Currently, it’s trading at over $400 a share and climbing. Today AI companies need this company’s GPU (graphics processing unit) computer chips for high-performance computing within their data centers.
The success of Nvidia perked Brooks’ interest in AI and was the catalyst for her idea of working with an AI text-to-speech bot tool offered by Synthesia, an Nvidia affiliate.
The Reynolds Educational Foundation Board grant allowing Brooks to move forward with her plan was created to promote unconventional thinking and to push educators to concentrate on inclusive teaching methods that enhance student equity and generate a sense of belonging.
This high-tech AI tool allows students to be exposed to a range of diversity, through the use of multicultural bots who will deliver Brooks’ lesson plans to online classes.
Introductory welcome video created by Brooks, using Synthesia AI bots with text to speech technology
What are the benefits of bots in the classroom?
The grant will allow Brooks to create educational content, which the bots will deliver to her paralegal students through Text-To-Speech (TTS) synthesis. TTS technology can take digital words and convert them into audio, while also allowing the bots to sound very human along with a range of diverse accents and dialects.
“One thing that is tremendously important to me in my classroom is representation and inclusion. I am who I am — a white middle-class woman and I can't change that about myself. But it doesn't mean that I can't offer exposure to other genders, ethnicities, and backgrounds to my students. I'm using AI to do that, so they hear different inflection and tones, and they see different faces other than just mine,” relays Brooks. It is her intention to normalize diversity.
It also allows English language learners to hear course content in their native tongue first, allowing multi-lingual students the energy to focus on achieving course outcomes, not on translation accuracy.
AI will also allow Brooks to tap into the various ways her students learn. Interactive solutions and the integration of Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools enable real-time questions to be answered with real-time responses from anywhere in the world. Captioned and recorded lectures can merge with other software platforms to assist students in generating individual mind maps or collaborative class notes to further their understanding. Students who are challenged by cognitive processing speed, language-based learning differences, and attention deficits, find themselves on equitable footing.
“I want to be more intentional about designing my courses and delivering the content by way of sectioning it into shorter bits by offering some intellectual pauses for students to pause and reflect and then come back to the content. This is important for all students, especially those with learning challenges. These are all things I wish that my teachers had done for me.”
In addition to her personal welcome video she’s created for online students, she has also created a warm welcome video for the bots to deliver, (as seen above.) It reflects the kind of diversity that she hopes students will come to experience in the course. Brooks aims to use the tool to “work a little bit smarter and not harder,” which is exactly what AI is meant to do.
Program goals
The goal of the small, but powerful Paralegal Studies program is to help students go into the practice of law. “A unique demographic of people are drawn to this type of work and we take a lot of pride in that,” says Brooks. The Paralegal Studies program is a rigorous program that includes learning to read the law, study the law, and think about all things law-related.
Amidst growing concerns about low enrollment in higher education and growing student debt, the Paralegal Studies program delivers. The program is extremely cost-effective with a huge return on investment. Brooks shared that for around $10,000 in tuition to complete the program a student can turn around and land an $80,000-a-year job without having any additional certifications or credentialing. It truly lives up to Reynolds mission as a community college with a focus on education with pathways leading to higher degrees and in-demand careers.
Wearing many hats, Brooks, the only full-time faculty in the program, is mindful of the way she operates the program. The bots enable her to continue to make the program a success with limited resources.
“I’ve been challenged with trying to figure out how to make my job easier and more manageable with the body and mind of one…. I’m counting on artificial intelligence to help so I can keep doing what I want to do in serving the students.”
This grant and the use of AI bots show that a community college like Reynolds can offer students the latest in cutting-edge technology. The added benefits are diversity and inclusion, leveling the playing field for ESL students, and offering alternatives to those who are learning-impaired.
Are there concerns about AI and robots taking teaching jobs? Brooks concludes, “Currently we still control the technology. We still need the human element of the technology — especially in this tender moment when we're developing it and all its capabilities. We need more people with the mindset of the greater good than the naysayers. For the future of education, I owe it to my students to keep my aging millennial finger on the pulse.”