New AI Tutor for Students
AI-powered chatbot for supporting individualized learning
Aidviser Tutoring Chatbot
How do you provide personalized support to 800+ students in a single course? The Teaching Center of our Department has developed Aidviser, an AI-powered educational chatbot, to address this pedagogical challenge in large-enrollment courses.
Aidviser offers an effective learning solution through its multimodel architecture that connects to various AI providers. It features two distinct modes:
- Tutoring Mode: Guides students through problem-solving processes
- Explainer Mode: Offers direct concept clarification when needed
This approach delivers 24/7 personalized support for all students while fostering AI literacy - an increasingly essential skill in professional contexts.
Impact and Student Feedback:
Successfully piloted in Executive Education Finance courses (who funded the initial prototype) and expanded to Banking and Finance I and II (with ULF micro_innovation support), Aidviser has demonstrated versatility across diverse contexts - from large first-semester courses (900+ students) to smaller settings and fully online learning scenarios. With over 14,000 student interactions per semester, feedback has been particularly positive regarding its course-specific focus and guided learning approach.
As one student noted: "Having the ability to get help outside of office hours was incredibly valuable, especially when preparing for exams."
Future Vision
The goal of this project is to integrate Aidviser with KlickerUZH, our classroom interaction platform this summer 2025 to make AI-powered tutoring capabilities available to lecturers across UZH. There will also be a collaboration with central UZH initiatives including EducationAI (Abteilung Lehrentwicklung) and AI Buddy (UZH Digitalstrategie) to ensure alignment and leverage university-wide synergies. Additionally, the project is focusing on how AI interaction data can inform pedagogical research and improve teaching practices in the age of AI.
Through projects like Aidviser, the Teaching Center contributes to both practical teaching support and the broader conversation about quality AI implementation in higher education.
More information:
About the chatbot project:https://www.df.uzh.ch/en/department/teaching-center/projects-and-innovation/aidviser.html
About the KlickerUZH use case: https://www.klicker.uzh.ch/use_cases/chatbot_tutoring/
Read the short article in OecMagazin: https://www.oec.uzh.ch/static/epaper_23-2025/#0
Photo source: iStock, Dedraw Studio