IU revolutionizes learning for its students with the AI study buddy Syntea and Azure OpenAI Service

The challenge: Make studies as personalized as possible—but how?

IU International University of Applied Sciences (IU) has made it its mission to provide each person with the opportunity to grow as they progress along their chosen educational path—globally, individually, flexibly, and autonomously. The focus here is on personalizing studies: students ought to be given the chance to learn in a way that matches their individual requirements and preferences. After all, many are completing distance learning degrees while also working and taking care of their family commitments. They study at different times and in different locations. This means that structure, organizational skills, and time management are essential. IU provides assistance in this area, for instance from tutors.

“Tutors know best what materials their students have already covered, where there are still gaps, and where there’s potential to delve deeper. That said, it’s naturally up to each student to put together their own study plan,” explains Felix Schiessl, Senior Innovation Manager at IU. But what do students do if they have questions when doing exam prep late at night or on the weekend? “Given the increasing size and internationality of our online student body, providing proactive study assistance in the way we want and scaling it effectively hinges on having the right technology,” Schiessl adds.

In this case, the right technology is artificial intelligence (AI). “AI is the key to personalizing the learning experience and implementing new use cases. At the same time, hardly anybody really knows how to make efficient use of AI tools,” says Prof. Kamal Bhattacharya, Vice Rector Research & Transfer and Professor of Computer Science at IU. “AI can be a massive help when it comes to writing scientific papers that deal with complex material, for instance by offering ways to structure them. But in order for this to work, you have to understand the underlying process.” And this is exactly what IU has been teaching since October 2023 as part of its courses on AI prompting—in other words, how to give AI commands and ask it questions. These courses are an integral part of all online and degree programs and teach students key skills that they are going to need in the labor market of tomorrow.

But IU is taking this another step further: “Ideas for how to integrate AI into a study buddy were around even before ChatGPT came out. But at that time, AI models for processing natural language weren’t yet suitable for use at universities,” says Quintus Stierstorfer, Director Synthetic Teaching at IU. “It was the advent of large language models that marked the breakthrough that led to the development of Syntea.” As a generative language model, the AI study buddy draws on Azure OpenAI Service and thus offers a host of high-performance functions that enable students to have a personalized learning experience.

The solution: AI study bot and Azure OpenAI Service boost students’ learning success

“Our organization is running more than 100 AI initiatives, including in the fields of media production, IT, marketing, and other internal processes. All these applications are managed centrally so that the endpoints for Azure OpenAI Service or other models can also be used outside the Microsoft environment,” says Thomas Lorenz, Director Microsoft Platform at IU. “Depending on the use case, we employ a number of different AI models for Syntea, but some features do require ultrahigh-performance models that call for a high level of computing capacity. It’s simply not acceptable for students to receive no or only poor answers just because other users are asking a lot of questions. Here’s where we can count on the scalability, availability, and speed of the cloud.”

Thanks to this technology basis, Syntea is now available to IU students wherever they are, around the clock and in multiple languages. As a result, it’s no longer an issue that tutors and their students are working in different time zones. Syntea’s seamless integration into a multitude of applications and mobile devices—such as IU’s myCampus learning platform or the 1,000 or so course teams currently hosted on Microsoft Teams—makes accessing it even easier. “Through Syntea and Azure OpenAI Service, learning is becoming more adaptive overall, bringing students more autonomy, flexibility, and personalization. This elevates the IU learning experience to a whole new level,” Stierstorfer says.

Syntea’s net promoter score—a metric for customer satisfaction—is roughly 74 percent. One reason for this high score is that Syntea uses natural language, which allows students to communicate with the study buddy as they would with a human. Another reason is that Syntea offers such a wide range of features. Using the question-and-answer function, students can ask the AI any question relating to their IU course material. If a question has been asked before, students get an answer immediately. If it hasn’t, Syntea extracts the right answer from the course material in a matter of seconds. Answers supplied to students are simultaneously also sent to their tutors. “Using the feedback tool, tutors check the answer to make sure it’s correct, rework it if it’s not, and verify it. That’s how we ensure that the language model doesn’t invent content or links,” Stierstorfer says. “Syntea gives students the option of posing their questions in a non-public chat, which has led to a massive increase in the number of questions being asked. In turn, this has vastly improved our students’ learning experience.”

While they are studying, students can also use Syntea as an interactive tool to prepare for exams by answering practice questions. “Syntea provides personalized feedback as to which answers were correct, incorrect, or incomplete. This means students have a more targeted way of filling in the gaps in their knowledge, as well as evidence—and not just a gut feeling—of how well they’ve prepared,” Schiessl says. “As part of a scientific study, we ascertained that since the introduction of the exam trainer, the average time IU students need to complete online courses has fallen by 27 percent.”

At present, Syntea is available to students as an interactive avatar that speaks with a female voice. “In the future, thanks to Microsoft’s text-to-speech technology, we’ll be able to offer a range of realistic conversation formats in real time,” Stierstorfer says. As IU keeps developing Syntea further, there are plans to add in new functions and integrate the AI study buddy into yet more applications.

But Syntea isn’t the only case of IU exploring how it could expand its use of Microsoft technology throughout the university: “We’re taking an in-depth look at what makes the most sense for our students and what will bring them the most added value,” Lorenz says. “This includes further expanding our partnership with Microsoft, for instance by participating in the Compass program to work with new technologies early on and share our feedback with Microsoft. In this way, we’re doing all we can to prepare our students for the AI world of tomorrow.”