Patrick Bassner, M.Sc.

In this thesis, the goal is to enhance the contextual awareness of a GPT-based educational chatbot, named IRIS, on the Artemis Learning Platform by incorporating lecture content. To do this, the lecture slides should be embedded into a vector database, and the chatbot should be able to retrieve the most relevant slides based on the user’s query in order to provide the most relevant answer.

The challenges encountered by students during the completion of exercises necessitate the implementation of a proactive assistance mechanism within Artemis. This could potentially be achieved through the integration of generative AI technologies such as ChatGPT. The objective of this thesis is to augment Artemis with the capability to provide automatic and proactive assistance to students when they encounter difficulties. The effectiveness and impact of this approach on the learning experience will be evaluated through a comprehensive assessment.

The thesis aims to enhance the instructor interface and student experience in the IRIS learning platform. The project will introduce a thumbnail grid for instructors to manage slides intuitively, ensuring persistent configurations even when slides are updated. The system will adapt to changes, such as the addition of new slides, by automatically adjusting the selection and maintaining the overall structure. Advanced features like automatic slide number extraction and adaptive reference management will be implemented to maintain continuity when slides are updated. The project also aims to improve the student experience by enabling direct browser viewing of lecture slides, moving away from traditional PDF downloads. This approach will provide a more seamless and integrated learning experience, with functionalities like slide hiding synchronized with exercise deadlines. The in-browser viewing experience will be interactive, allowing students to engage with the material dynamically. Additional features to enhance user experience include interactive annotations, real-time communication integration on lecture slides, and a dark mode option for PDF viewing in the browser. This project will significantly improve the usability and functionality of the IRIS learning platform, fostering a more structured and paced learning environment.

The goal of this thesis is to evaluate the effectiveness of IRIS, a GPT-based chatbot for higher education. The chatbot is integrated into the Artemis learning platform and is designed to provide assistance to students when they encounter difficulties. In addition, the chatbot is capable of answering questions related to the course content. Instructors can benefit from IRIS through assistance in exercise generation.

In this thesis, the effectiveness of IRIS will be evaluated through a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. The quantitative evaluation will be conducted through a comprehensive assessment of the chatbot’s performance both in real course and experimental settings. The qualitative evaluation will be conducted through a survey of students and instructors and expert interviews. The results of the evaluation will be used to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the chatbot and to provide recommendations for future improvements.