Last year, in a first-of-its-kind funding, Melissa Brooks, Associate Professor and Program Head of Paralegal Studies at Reynolds Community College, was awarded a teaching innovation grant for her proposal to use Artificial Intelligence. She used grant funds to enhance online learning in the college’s two-year, American Bar Association-approved paralegal degree program.
Brooks does this using virtual robots, each with their own avatar, voice, set of mannerisms, and environment. The bots speak more than 120 languages and are fully customizable.
A developing interest in AI
Brooks’ interest in artificial intelligence began years ago at Reynolds, in 2016. In a class lesson on corporate law, she assigned students to research companies of interest that are traded on the open markets. She had a few gamers in the class who found a company, Nvidia, that was making computer chips for virtual reality video games, and they invested to see what it would do. It turned out to be a very successful investment.
The success of Nvidia perked Brooks’ interest in AI and was the catalyst for her idea of working with an AI text-to-speech bot tool offered by Synthesia, an Nvidia affiliate. Brooks thought, “Can you think of a better way to show students the cause and effect of aligning your investments with your consumption patterns? I can’t. After all, now my students saw themselves as shareholders!”
The Reynolds Educational Foundation Board grant allowing Brooks to move forward with her plan was created to promote unconventional thinking and to push educators to concentrate on inclusive teaching methods that enhance student equity and generate a sense of belonging.
This high-tech AI tool allows students to be exposed to a range of diversity, through the use of multicultural bots who will deliver Brooks’ lesson plans to online classes.
Introductory welcome video created by Brooks, using Synthesia AI bots with text to speech technology
What are the benefits of bots in the classroom?
The grant allowed Brooks to create educational content, which the bots deliver to her paralegal students through Text-To-Speech (TTS) synthesis. TTS technology can take digital words and convert them into audio, while also allowing the bots to sound very human along with a range of diverse accents and dialects.
“I am who I am — a white middle-class female, and I can't change that about myself. But it doesn't preclude me from creating a richer classroom experience that best represents the working world. If I can use emerging tech to diversify the online instructional element, all the better,” said Brooks.
It also allows English language learners to hear course content in their native tongue first, allowing multilingual students the energy to focus on achieving course outcomes, not on translation accuracy.
AI has also allowed Brooks to tap into the various ways her students learn. Interactive solutions and the integration of Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools enable real-time questions to be answered with real-time responses from anywhere in the world. Captioned and recorded lectures can merge with other software platforms to assist students in generating individual mind maps or collaborative class notes to further their understanding. Students who are challenged by cognitive processing speed, language-based learning differences, and attention deficits, find themselves on equitable footing.
Program goals
The goal of the Paralegal Studies program is to help students go into the practice of law. “A unique demographic of people are drawn to this type of work and we take a lot of pride in that. Training the next generation of legal thinkers is a responsibility I take very seriously,” says Brooks. The Paralegal Studies program is a rigorous program that includes learning to read the law, communicate the law and to think deeply about various areas of substantive law.
Amidst growing concerns about low enrollment in higher education and growing student debt, the Paralegal Studies program delivers. The program is extremely cost-effective with a huge return on investment. Brooks shared that for around $10,000 in tuition to complete the program a student can turn around and land an $80,000-a-year job without having any additional certifications or credentialing. It truly lives up to Reynolds mission as a community college with a focus on education with pathways leading to higher degrees and in-demand careers.
This grant and the use of AI bots show that a community college like Reynolds offers students the latest in cutting-edge technology. The added benefits are diversity and inclusion, leveling the playing field for ESL students, and offering alternatives to those with learning differences.
Learn more about the Paralegal Studies program at Reynolds.