AI teaching assistants help U. Virginia expand course availability
The University of Virginia’s Cognitive Science-Based Learning Hub program began using AI avatars as teaching assistants at the start of the fall 2025 semester.
The university’s paper, The Cavalier Daily, reported that the software, developed by Alpha Education, is helping students compress a day’s worth of learning into two hours. Courses offered through the learning hub do not count toward university credit, but they do qualify for a research requirement for foundational psychology courses.
The addition of the AI agents has enabled the university to expand the number of slots in a cognitive science course from 40 to 120 students, the paper reported, by adding online AI-based instruction.
The university is now evaluating how students responded to AI-based instruction as it evaluates continued use of the technology in 2026.
“One of the things everybody learned during [the pandemic] is it’s really not very fun to talk to a screen,” psychology professor Dan Willingham told the Daily. “When you know it’s AI, I think it’s going to be all the more difficult to maintain motivation.”
