Author: robynne71

Last week Dr. Elizabeth Childs and I had the privilege to do our first presentation about the Open GenAI project. A big thank you to the Canadian Association of Research Libraries for the invitation to come and share about the project. If you would like to watch the recording from the session, you can do so here. If you would like to review our slide deck from our presentation, you can find it here. We have a few more presentations coming up over the next month so we will be sure to share recordings here once they are available.

This past week I also reached out to the authors of the 25 open textbooks we will be using for Opterna, our AI study companion. This week I met with some of those folks, and it was really exciting to hear how interested folks are in the idea of an AI study companion with their open textbooks. The longer the project goes the more I am learning about both the technical considerations for working AI and some of the tensions that we often face with openly licenced resources. 

As I have mentioned before, we are only committed to the development and testing of a prototype and whether we host Opterna beyond the project will be informed on what we hear at the focus groups we will do in 2026.

A couple considerations that I am already contemplating are;

1. Cost and stats, open textbooks get a lot of traffic, but not all traffic is actual learning, bots mess with our stats, so it won’t be until we are in the testing phase before we have a true sense of cost to host the tool. 

2. The other tension we will have to navigate is the fact we are using an existing, pre-trained LLM so the tool is not being “trained” so it will not be going out beyond the 25 textbooks we have chosen. The pro for that approach is less inaccurate information in the responses Opterna generates. A challenge we already know we will face is that open textbooks will eventually become outdated so deciding how to know when it’s time to remove a textbook and replace with a more current version. We will need to understand what that work entails and whether we have capacity to manage that.

Anyways, that is it for now, we are having lots of fun learning, engaging with folks, and we are looking forward to lots more conversations in the near future.

We are now a few months into the Open GenAI project so I thought I would provide a few highlights of the work that has happened so far.  

We are excited to welcome Dr. Elizabeth Childs onto the project who will help us fulfill the deliverables and bring a pedagogical perspective to this work. Elizabeth comes with a long history of advocating and working with open educational practice and as the Program Head for the Master of Arts in Learning and Technology at Royal Roads University has a deep understanding on learning and teaching with technology. 

We are excited to be working with UBC Cloud Innovation Centre (UBC CIC) who will be working with us on the development of the AI powered study companion prototype. One thing I loved about the idea of working with UBC CIC was the involvement of working with co-op students in the development. Development of the prototype is just starting, and we plan to have it completed by the end of December. The prototype will be openly accessible on GitHub once development is complete. 

As part of our continued efforts to involve students in the work, we recently worked with the BC Federation of Students (BCFS) to host a student focus group to learn from students some of their experiences, perceptions, and challenges in the use of AI in their learning journey. Once we have the prototype developed, we are hoping to work with the BCFS to get more students engaged in the testing.  If you have students who you think would like to be involved in the testing, please reach out to rdevine@bccampus.ca. 

Elizabeth and I are planning do some engagement sessions with educators to learn more about their experiences, perceptions, and challenges of using AI in their learning and teaching practices. We will be inviting educators into the testing phase to get their feedback on the tool and start to build awareness for educators who are using open textbooks on their courses.  

Hearing from students and educators will help shape our approach to the design of the AI powered study companion we are building with UBC CIC. This will also help inform what other resources we can provide when working with open GenAI tools as we look at years two and three for this project. 

Research is a big part of this work. Harper continues to dig deeper into the use of offline generative AI tools and smaller models as a way to address environmental, privacy, and ethical concerns from the post-secondary sector, and Elizabeth is exploring doing some research to share our experience, learning as part of a way to share back about this work to the larger open community. Join us at our session for the Digital Learning Strategy Forum and watch the blog for updates on how you can get be part of this action research project. 

With the Hewlett funding now in place, we are busy at BCcampus scoping out a project plan for the Open GenAI project. The team that will be supporting this work will be myself – Robynne Devine, Senior Project Manager, PMO, Harper Friedman, Coordinator Open Textbook Publishing, and Kaitlyn Zheng, Coordinator, Project Support and Open Publication, with Clint Lalonde being our Project Champion. I will be leaning on Clint a lot at the beginning given his deep understanding and vision for this project. Harper and Kaitlyn are already busy doing some preliminary research. I have been focusing on project documentation and doing as much learning as I can on Gen AI.  

The goal of this project will be to explore and experiment with a variety of open-source Gen AI tools and technologies that align with open education values, including focusing on issues of equity, accessibility, and inclusivity while also offering offline access, reducing environmental impact, and ensuring student privacy.  BCcampus will work with partners in the develop of an ethically focused AI powered study tool prototype to compliment the BCcampus open textbook collection.  

WOW, ok that sounds like a lot, and it is. There are so many questions floating around in my brain right now. 

What defines an equitable open Gen AI tool or technology? 

Is it possible to have a fully accessible open GenAI tool? 

What is defines an ethical AI powered study tool prototype? 

How can we build this to ensure its improving learning and not taking away from the learning? 

How do we define ethical? 

I lean towards an AI study tool that asks students questions to help guide them to deepen their learning, rather than providing answers or summaries, but that is just me and it is early in the project. But I am trying to enter into this project being aware of the biases (good and bad) around GenAI. Student safety and improved student experiences are top of mind for this work. 

Robynne