Application of AI teaching assistant to college education of principles of chemical engineering

Abstract

With the development of large language models(LLM) in Artificial Intelligence(AI), AI assistants have been widely applied across various sectors and lead to tremendous enhancing in the work efficiency. However, there is hardly any comprehensive studies on the application of AI assistants to the teaching and evaluation process of Principles of Chemical Engineering course for college education. Therefore, this paper integrates and optimizes the teaching and evaluation processes of Principles of Chemical Engineering course with the assistance of AI technology. By leveraging AI technology for instructional support, the course content is integrating with real-life scenarios and cutting-edge scientific research. In the meanwhile, students' systematic thinking, innovative and entrepreneurial skills as well as the critical thinking can get fostered. Moreover, integration of knowledge across disciplines, majors, and even virtual-real scenarios can get accelerated and expanded with the AI assistant. During the reform, the following modulus, including interactive conversation led by guide words, optional module expansion for practical applications, error-spotting games for figures and literatures, curriculum design and composition of business plans are facilitated by the AI assistant to improve the interest, breadth and depth of the curriculum contents. The implementation of this case effectively advances the reform of college education in the boosting backdrop of AI, equipping students with thoughts and abilities to apply the latest AI technologies to their study and research projects. The implementation of the case has been proven to be practically feasible, and shows great potentials for further applications.