A large chilean technical-professional higher education institution, developed and implemented in 2023 the Virtual Assistant, based on GPT AI to contribute to the teaching digital presence with a 24/7 service of academic answers to student questions, contextualized in the curricular definitions of each subject in which it is qualified.

A Chilean technical-professional higher education institution with a large volume of students (around 95,000 per year), put into service in 2023 the Virtual Assistant with artificial intelligence, an assistant available in each virtual classroom for the subjects in which it is defined, within the learning platform or LMS (all course groups of all subjects have a virtual classroom in the LMS).

The institution whose team presents has a vocation for service that seeks significant contributions in technology to the methodological deployment to achieve educational experiences of significant learning and satisfaction in their experience. Technology is, in fact, one of the five core elements of its Educational Model.

By institutional definition, the teaching team must be current in the various productive sectors of the careers in which they practice teaching, in order to contribute significantly to the transmission of experiences and knowledge typical of the day-to-day life of the professions in learning spaces - rooms, workshops and laboratories, physical and virtual. Teachers are taught methodological and technical aspects for the best deployment of their teaching, in a formal institutional teacher training program. In addition to class hours, additional time may be available for complementary academic actions to care for students and to reinforce certain aspects of the subjects that are identified as having decreased performance.

Any action that helps students have interactive access to knowledge and the development of their skills, in real time as if they were conversing with their teachers, is welcome, expanding the horizon of the hours of classes or previously designed learning, as well as of the hours of complementary care.

Although in all modalities, it is necessary to strengthen the teaching presence, it is in asynchronous online education that this requirement becomes more evident, since there are usually no moments of real-time interaction between teachers and students. It is determined, then, to develop methodological and technological actions that contribute to the teaching digital presence, in the first instance for asynchronous distance education, more extensible to all formats.

The idea behind the initiative has been to contribute to the teaching digital presence with a 24/7 service of academic answers to students' questions, contextualized in the curricular definitions of each subject in which it is enabled. The solution seeks to provide availability and opportunity, both for students who study completely remotely (around 20,000 total) and those in courses in face-to-face and blended formats (another 75,000) and enrich students' experiences with innovation and better service, improving academic results, learning and student satisfaction.

The Virtual Assistant is an internal development of the institution that was carried out using the generative artificial intelligence provided by GPT, connecting it through the API provided by the provider. Together with another AI assistant, for instructional design, the institution became the first in Chile to incorporate artificial intelligence in the student training process with these two developments.

By integrating the subject program, a document that makes its curricular definitions - learning, competencies, contents and evaluation criteria - with generative artificial intelligence, the assistant presents itself as a chat in the virtual classroom, facilitating the interaction between the student, the contents, the learning and the evaluation criteria.

Using the curricular definitions of each subject tends to contextualize the answers that the Virtual Assistant provides, ensuring that they are limited to the scope defined by the institution and do not go into possible deepening or inappropriate difficulties, as well as possible and apparent contradictions with what is referred by the teacher in charge of each subject and the digital educational resources that are part of it. Notwithstanding this, generative artificial intelligence allows us to provide answers in real time, quickly and completely, in relevant human language and to resolve students' doubts.

The service began on August 22, 2023 with a pilot experience in four transversal and completely asynchronous distance subjects, in a universe of over seven hundred course groups for more than fifty-one thousand enrollments, maintaining one hundred course groups without service as a control group.

Since October 17, it moved to the regular service stage, adding more than 300 subjects that gradually increased during the remainder of the semester to reach more than 500 at the end of the year and all subjects by March 2024, reaching around of 1,300.

The leadership and development team of the tool seek to share with the community the design experience and the first commissioning, in various aspects such as:
- Curricular and instructional considerations and definitions.
- Challenges, studied paths and developed solutions for integrations.
- Challenges, alternatives, programming language and major technical development considerations.
- Interface and navigability considerations and attributes.
- Ethical and behavioral challenges of teachers and students, which resulted in specific regulations.
- Instances of communication and motivation.
- Monitoring and analytical tools for assessment by students.
- Learning from the operation of the service.

At the date of application, there are certain first learnings and evaluations that will be strengthened with measurements of academic performance and satisfaction. The virtual classrooms also have an evaluation survey that at the beginning of October showed a high rating of the experience (72% from good to excellent) and perception of usefulness (50% agree or strongly agree) and low evaluation of difficulty in use (15% difficult and very difficult) and lack of understanding (16% report having received answers that are rarely or never understandable). The responses up to that point were from 421 students out of a universe of 1,716 who had used the assistant. By the date of the event, it is expected to have a closing evaluation in 2023 and first measurements in 2024.

With the idea that the audience can make the results of our experience their own, to enhance their own experiences, as well as to be able to make proposals for improvements to our services, a participatory session will be held. The session will begin with a participatory motivation and diagnosis exercise regarding this type of tools. Then, the solution will be presented live in operation, as well as the entire set of learnings acquired, opening spaces for questions and collaborative conversation.