Leveraging the Human Classroom with AI-Powered Resources

As we strive to bring genuine learning in our online classrooms, we are faced with the decision of how to handle the emergence of easily accessible AI-powered resources. Instead of considering these tools as a threat to higher education, we believe that it presents a unique opportunity to actually enhance student engagement and learning by integrating AI in course materials and Learning Management System (LMS) features. Our paper will begin with an overview of how we can improve threaded discussions, an essential component of online courses. Then, we will share case studies and experience with embedding custom Chatbots in LMS course shells. Online education often reduces the interaction between educators and learners. Chatbots can be used to enhance this interaction and create human-centered learning environments by helping learners receive immediate support on a wide range of topics. Finally, we will consider how AI can be used to uphold academic integrity in online courses. For example, AI-based applications can help generate pools of possible assessment questions in our courses to provide unique assignments. Also, we will look into the role of AI in detecting plagiarism. Since current tools such as Turnitin are only capable of text matching, we will explore the need and current research in the detection of plagiarism in images