Using AI and Analytics to Assess and Supplement Students' Prior Knowledge Needed to Succeed in Large STEM Courses √ §

In this workshop, Dr. Sarah Bass (Chemistry) will reprise (and dive deeper into) a Spring 25 DoIT & FDC panel presentation on her use of NotebookLM to develop "Virtual Prof. Bass," an AI-driven tool that guides students in her CHEM 101 course to proactively engage with course materials. Specifically, the session will focus on a study she did of at-risk students this summer in Carnegie Mellon's LearnLab: Compared to students who take the CHEM 101 & 102 sequence in Fall and Spring, "off-track" students who start the sequence in the Spring tend to underperform on standardized American Chemical Society (ACS) concept inventory exam questions embedded in her unit, midterm, and final exams. In addition to learning about her 24/7 "Virtual Prof Bass", participants will hear about her targeted plan to address this issue by offering focused practice and success strategies during the CHEM 101 common exam time on Friday afternoons from 4-6 p.m. Her research and practice are supported by both a UMBC Learning Analytics "renewal" mini grant and a second year of funding from Digital Promise ChemCore, to support faculty use of REAL Chem courseware developed by Arizona State University and Carnegie Mellon University.

This session is co-sponsored by DoIT and FDC and will serve as the first UMBC Learning Analytics Community of Practice talk of the Fall 2025 semester.

Please click "Going Virtually" below to reserve your seat for this session, and we will send you a Google calendar invitation with a WebEx link one hour before the session. If you register less than an hour before the session, you will receive the WebEx link when you register. Please email fdc@umbc.edu if you have any questions. If you have registered and find that you can no longer attend, please kindly release your spot so that others may attend.

√ Counts toward the ALIT Certificate
§ Counts toward the INNOVATE Certificate

Photo provided by Sarah Bass.