University of Coimbra project develops AI tools to assist educators in creating learning materials
O "SmartEDU" tem como principal finalidade apoiar transmissores de conhecimento (professores e formadores) no momento da criação de testes de avaliação e de slides para apresentações, pretendendo que esta solução aumente a eficiência deste tipo de processos e reduza o tempo despendido na preparação de conteúdos.
A research team from the Faculty of Sciences and Technology of the University of Coimbra (FCTUC) has developed artificial intelligence (AI) tools to improve the creation of engaging and efficient educational materials, in order to meet the challenges of the widespread use of new technologies in education and training.
The project "SmartEDU - Smart assistant for generating educational questions and presentations" has as main purpose to assist teachers and trainers in the creation of assessment tests and presentation slides, thus improving the efficiency of these processes and reducing the time spent in content preparation.
“We explored different automatic and semi-automatic approaches to generate questions and their possible answers, based on documents covering the topics addressed in (training) courses, meaning that the platform generates a list of questions based on the subjects taught and, in the case of multiple choice questions, it also generates the various right and wrong options”, explains Hugo Gonçalo Oliveira, researcher at the Centre for Informatics and Systems of the University of Coimbra (CISUC) and professor at the Department of Informatics Engineering (DEI - FCTUC.
The platform also allows the generation of presentation slides based on course content, through a system that identifies the main topics of the documents available, suggesting a sequence of slides.
Created in 2021, “SmartEdu” was developed to allow teachers to have more time for students. “If the teacher spends less time creating tests and preparing presentations they can spend more time interacting with students and preparing classes”, says Oliveira.
The platform will be available to the general public on demand, through Mindflow, the tendering company of the project.
SmartEDU, funded with around half a million euros by the Portuguese Innovation Agency (ANI), was developed in partnership with Mindflow, UC and Instituto Pedro Nunes (IPN).
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Original news article in Portuguese: Sara Machado | FCTUC
English version: Diana Taborda