Development and Innovative Application of AI Tutor at PolyU-A Cross-Faculty Pilot
The traditional lecture hall often faces a quiet but persistent challenge: the gap between a student’s midnight epiphany and a professor’s office hours. As academic materials grow more complex—spanning hundreds of pages of textbooks, intricate slides, and dense research notes—students can easily feel lost in the sheer volume of information. Meanwhile, educators frequently find their creative energy diverted by repetitive, routine queries, leaving less room for the deep, transformative discussions that spark true innovation. This disconnect can stall momentum, creating a barrier to the seamless, high-velocity learning required in today’s rapidly evolving world.
Led by Prof. LU Haitian, Hong Kong Sustaintech Foundation Professor in Accounting and Finance and Director of Mainland Development Office, the development and innovative application of AI Tutor at PolyU is emerging as a visionary solution to this challenge. Unlike generic AI tools that offer broad and sometimes unreliable answers, this system is a "course-specific" digital mentor. By building a trusted knowledge base directly from a course’s own syllabus, teacher notes, and past exams, the AI Tutor provides students with 24/7, bilingual support in both English and Chinese. It does not simply provide answers; it offers personalised guidance, suggesting bespoke learning paths and practice recommendations tailored to each learner’s unique progress.
What sets this pilot apart is its commitment to academic integrity and precision. The system combines intelligent search with generative technology, ensuring every response is traceable back to the original source materials. This eliminates the risk of off-topic or incorrect content, providing a secure environment where students can engage with figures, documents, and complex text at their own pace. For professors, the platform is an empowering ally. By automating routine Q&A and ensuring consistency across all student interactions, the AI Tutor frees up invaluable classroom time for higher-level problem solving and collaborative discovery.
This cross-faculty initiative is a shining example of PolyU Education 4.0 in action. By placing an AI-empowered tool directly into the hands of students, the University is pioneering a student-centred model that is as inclusive as it is innovative. The project’s two-year roadmap—from rigorous system testing to campus-wide promotion—ensures a replicable and ethical framework that can be scaled across disciplines.
This project is awarded under the Teaching Development Grant 2025–28 in the Theme-based Projects category (Individual Project).
