AI Tools Launch Longhorn Learning Into the Future

Taimur Rashid remembers dialing in to register for classes. The voice on the line—familiar, automated, and slow—greeted him each semester. After a long wait, TEX, UT’s telephone registration system, would finally prompt him to choose his courses. Though Rashid, BA ’02, studied computer science at UT not so long ago, he laughs at how far technology has come since. 

“If I had to relive my educational experience where we are today, I definitely think that having AI powered across these different aspects of the whole educational process would be so helpful,” Rashid says.  

Telephone registration created a leap in technology for students when it launched in 1988. Longhorns are once again experiencing significant technological changes as the University implements campus-wide AI integration, including the roll out of two platforms this fall: UT Sage and UT Spark. The two new tools are designed to help students with everything from personalized tutoring to improving daily workflow.  

It’s a pivotal moment at UT as it embraces AI technology—from declaring 2024 the “Year of AI,” to expanding existing partnerships with AI companies, to growing its research labs and degree programs—all while establishing a framework for responsible use.  

Just before the fall semester, Enterprise Technology—the department advancing UT’s digital ecosystem—launched UT Spark, a new generative AI platform free for students, faculty, and staff. With Spark, users can brainstorm ideas and develop projects by interacting with the platform and its AI models.  

Cole Camplese, vice president for technology and chief information officer at UT’s Enterprise Technology, says new tech trends hit campuses every two years, and it’s difficult to predict in which of those trends to invest for the long term.

“AI, I believe, will be as transformative to higher education as the internet was,” Camplese says. “And I want to make sure that even though we had concerns, we could begin to experiment so that when the concerns were overcome, we were ready to move.”    

A key goal in developing Spark, Camplese adds, was accessibility. As a longtime advocate for low-cost learning materials such as open textbooks, he wants to see technologies that are equitable and available to all students.  

UT Sage, the new AI tutoring platform developed in partnership with Microsoft, also launched for the fall semester. With Sage, faculty can upload their class material and create chatbots that can aid students in learning. The chatbots then use a Socratic-like method by asking questions that prompt students to think critically about their coursework.  

“The objective is to provide opportunities for extending students’ cognitive presence around content outside of class,” says Julie Schell, assistant vice provost and director of the Office of Academic Technology. “In less fancy terms—learning. Learning happens when you spend time thinking about and working with and applying the things that you’re learning in class, outside of class.” 

Schell had the idea to create Sage when trying to create a tutor chatbot for her own class. She asked herself, “‘What if we had a tutor at UT that had really strong learning science principles behind it and felt safe to use because it had responsible adoption principles behind it?’”  

The question led Schell and a team of colleagues to develop the University’s Responsible Adoption of AI Tools for Teaching and Learning, a set of guidelines that mapped out how UT could responsibly and ethically adopt AI. The framework was key in developing Sage.  

Though there are additional complexities when considering AI, much of the conversation in higher education mirrors that of previous introductions to new technology. Schell—along with Sage developer Kasey Ford, MA ’13, and senior vice provost for academic affairs Art Markman—has likened today’s era of AI to the advent of “inexpensive, hand-held calculators” in the 1970s, which marked a turning point in math education. Though calculators and generative AI exist in different spheres, the core concern remains: Will this tool help or hinder student learning?  

“My hope is that we could use these kind of inflection points to have conversations about technology adoption,” Schell says.

Rashid is now the managing director of the Generative AI Innovation Center at Amazon Web Services. Sage was developed in collaboration with the center, a program that connects AI strategists, applied scientists, and engineers to customers.  

For Rashid, helping customers understand and use AI allows his team to democratize the technology—benefiting sectors from financial services and healthcare, to government and higher education.  

In 1989, former UT president William Cunningham declared a registration crisis. The long lines outside of Gregory Gymnasium were signs that the demand for classes had outpaced the school’s ability to keep up with in-person registration. The University took a risk to develop a new, in-house telephone system: TEX, a technological advancement that reigned as the University’s main registration system until 2003, when it was replaced with a web-based portal.  

“With emerging technologies, there’s always a mixture of optimism and excitement, but also reluctance, because with every new technology, it’s not just the technology that’s changing,” Rashid says. “It ultimately influences change in behavior.”

For Longhorns past and present, the spirit of innovation is nothing new. From the days of TEX to today’s AI-powered platforms, UT’s approach to student services continues to evolve. A reminder that while the tools may change, the drive to lead and learn remains. 

CREDIT: Maggie Chiang