The use of artificial intelligence avatars has emerged as one of the latest trends in the way AI is changing education. The Cognitive Science-Based Learning Hub program at the University — which teaches study strategies to first-year students — began using AI avatars as online teachers beginning in the Fall 2025 semester. As these various AI tools and models gain traction, the question remains — what role do AI avatars play in the future of education?
The avatars being used by the Learning Hub program are developed by Alpha Education, and are an AI-driven, adaptive learning technology that enables students to complete an entire day’s worth of learning in only two hours. While these avatars are new to the University, they are not new to higher-education in America. Other institutions that have already implemented avatars include Morehouse College and Columbia University.
The Learning Hub program is a peer-mentoring course in which upperclassmen Cognitive Science students teach study methods to first-year students, with a focus on note-taking skills and refining exam preparation practices. Mariana Teles, Learning Hub director and psychology professor, said that first-year College students can enroll for the course via an email they all receive at the beginning of the Fall semester.
While students do not receive academic credit towards a degree for the Learning Hub course, Teles said students do receive credit towards the research requirement for foundational Psychology courses. This requirement asks students to partake in outside research studies while enrolled in their Psychology classes.
By utilizing the avatars to teach new sections of the class, the program expanded this past Fall semester. In addition to the 40-person section taught by the upperclassmen Cognitive Science students, Teles explained that 80 online spots were added, increasing the capacity of the course from 40 to 120 students.
For students who have a spot in-person, the program consists of six sessions taught by advanced Cognitive Science majors who serve as mentors to the first-year students. In each session, they focus on a different Cognitive Science principle to apply to studying. For example, in the first session, students learn how to extract the hierarchical structure of a lecture — which involves identifying the main subject and the supporting details that follow. These principles are meant to improve memory retention, comprehension and critical thinking skills.
In the online version of the program, the same strategies are taught to the first-year students, but the AI-avatars are pre-recorded, meaning they function more like recorded lectures rather than live, interactive instructors. Teles shared a video demonstration of one of the AI avatars in action with The Cavalier Daily, which closely resembled a real person delivering a lesson.
“I'm Ali, your AI mentor, and I'm here to help you transform how you learn using proven strategies from cognitive science research,” the avatar said in the video. “Over the next six sessions you'll discover why some study methods work better than others, and, more importantly, how you apply them.”
With the introduction of the AI avatars this past Fall semester, Teles and the Cognitive Science students teaching the course are still thinking about whether they find the avatars equally as effective at teaching as in-person instruction.
Fourth-year College student Katie Chervenic serves as a mentor within the in-person Learning Hub program. Through this work, she said she has been exposed to the value of in-person teaching through building connections and relationships with students.
“Having the opportunity to learn from someone truly passionate about the topic allows students to connect with the material on a more personal level,” Chevernic said. “I don't believe AI would be able to capture this passion because it is so inherently human.”
However, Chevernic also believes there could be potential benefits of using AI avatars. Chevernic said she thinks that in some cases, using AI would minimize the errors that human instructors may make.
“As I taught these Learning Hub sessions myself, there were definitely moments where I either forgot specific details or would've liked to elaborate on topics where I didn't have the background to do so,” Chervenic said. “A sophisticated AI avatar could potentially fill those gaps.”
Teles also noted the important benefits of their in-person program. According to Teles, the upperclassmen instructors serve as guides for first-year students throughout their first semester at the University. Further, Teles explained that first-year students have the opportunity to build relationships with the advanced majors by discussing their anxieties about their first exams or course enrollment.
“I feel like there is an effective component with the in-person interaction that we will never be able to address with the AI avatars,” Teles said.
Nonetheless, Teles said it is important to find the proper balance to utilize both AI and traditional instruction in the classroom.
In order to evaluate the effectiveness of the strategies being taught in the course, the Learning Hub conducts two types of comprehensive learning assessments amongst students — one occurs before and after the program and the other occurs every two weeks between the program’s sessions. Students are asked about which learning strategies they utilize most, their motivation to learn and their grades in school. Data is compared between surveys as the program progresses to identify which teaching practices worked best.
According to Teles, data collected for both in-person and online groups from the Fall 2025 term will be available in January. Teles said she is curious to see how the polling data will differ between the in-person group and the online group.
Though Teles spearheaded the introduction of the avatars to the Learning Hub, Psychology Prof. Dan Willingham has served as an advisor on the project. Willingham’s book, published in 2023, “Outsmart Your Brain: Why Learning is Hard and How You Can Make It Easy,” details many of the study strategies taught by the Learning Hub course, such as active recall and incorporating visual elements into learning.
According to Willingham, students remaining motivated can be a challenge that arises in virtual learning environments. He noted that the AI avatars may be successful for students in the Learning Hub program who are already highly motivated and only interact with the avatars for this course rather than on a daily basis for all of their classes. He said this distinguishes the program from settings in which avatars fully replace in-person learning, and emphasized that overall, learning mediated by a screen often struggles to sustain engagement.
“One of the things everybody learned during [COVID-19] is it's really not very fun to talk to a screen,” Willingham said. “When you know it's AI, I think it's going to be all the more difficult to maintain motivation.”
First-year College student Fabiola Torres-Rodriguez participated in the in-person program of the Learning Hub this fall. She said she believes there are a multitude of ways students can utilize AI avatars as tutors, both in the classroom and out of it. Outside of the classroom, she said AI can help students gain confidence — such as practicing a skill before demonstrating it in class — and could even lower the barriers to learning for non-traditional students.
“I think this really helps first-generation students, neurodivergent students, ESL and heritage speakers, and anxious learners, because maybe they feel like they are not confident in their learning,” Torres-Rodriguez said. “It really creates a safe space to really practice thinking out loud.”
While experiences like this highlight the appeal of AI-assisted studying, they also raise questions about how students assess the quality of the information they receive. Willingham cautioned that large language models may be most effective for students who already have a strong foundation in a subject, raising concerns about how students evaluate the quality of AI-generated explanations because AI can have errors too.
“[AI large language models] are really helpful if you already have a deep knowledge [of the subject],” Willingham said. “If I ask it for a summary of trade policy during the Civil War that helped the Confederacy, it'll do that — absolutely no way of evaluating whether or not it's any good [because I’m not an expert on that subject].”
According to Teles, another aspect of learning that could be threatened by the use of AI is metacognition — a student’s awareness of their own learning process. Teles provided the example of giving students a reasoning problem with the assistance of an AI tool like ChatGPT. She explained that while students may improve their performance in this reasoning task, it will be at the cost of their metacognition because they cannot explain how they got to their answer.
“Sometimes the use of AI tools in overall research has shown that it improves a student's performance,” Teles said. “We have carefully designed this online AI-guided program to avoid a negative impact on metacognition, because the core aim of the program is to increase the students' awareness of their own process of learning.”
Whether students are being taught by the AI avatars or in-person instructors, Teles stressed the importance of students developing “AI literacy.” She said that she hopes students can learn how to use AI responsibly in a way that most directly benefits their learning.
“AI tools must be integrated in our teaching, but we have to find the right balance … [AI tools] must serve to optimize and leverage the learning process,” Teles said.
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