More and more eyeballs are turning to generative AI — digital tools that review a huge amount of data, and can "respond" to you with text that (more or less) sounds like a human.
Generative AI is an emerging technology, but it's already being used by students and teachers alike. Knowing which apps you can trust can be tricky. That's why we're sharing Contact North's new AI Tutor Pro apps. Don't let the name fool you! The app is 100% free to use for everyone.
Who is Contact North and why should I trust them?
Contact North (or Contact Nord) is a not-for-profit corporation organized under the Government of Ontario, with a mandate to help "underserved Ontario residents" who take online programs from Canadian colleges and universities. The Board of Directors is comprised of professors and admins from colleges and universities across the province, united in an effort to improve "equitable access to quality education and training."
You don't have to be in Ontario to use the app, though!
There's no profit motive for Contact North: the app is meant to support student learning, full stop! The University of Toronto has deemed the app safe, and even created a quick start guide to help students use it.
Protecting your privacy
Check out the full AI Tutor Pro privacy statement here. The basics are this:
- No user data is gathered, and there's no sign-up process at all
- Chat logs are collected, including messages sent and received; OpenAI keeps it for a maximum of 30 days
- Google Analytics data is captured to measure traffic to the site; nothing personally identifiable
- Data is never sold or transferred to third-parties
- Everything's fully compliant with the EU's General Data Protection Regulation and Canada's Consumer Privacy Protection Act
- Got questions about privacy? Reach out to privacy@contactnorth.ca
AI Tutor Pro
You can check out a quick video introduction below:
There are two main ways to use the app:
Be sure to try out both! You can save a copy of your session for review later on. Here's a quick example of the sort of exchange you can have with the CHECK your knowledge feature:
Customizing content, difficulty, and learning level
Whether you're CHECKing in your knowledge, or GROWing it, AI Tutor Pro lets you customize the tool to better fit your needs. The app works in over two dozen languages!
Specific topics, or your own content
You can ask specific questions, like "Who was Viola Desmond?" or you can paste in your own lecture notes or study materials, and the tool can challenge you with questions on the subject.
Topic difficulty and learning level
You can also fine-tune the results, with three topic difficulties, from introductory to advanced, and four learning levels, from elementary through to graduate school!
Caveats of using generative AI
Like any generative AI tool, the results won't always be 100% perfect. Remember, tools like these use enormous databases of written text, gathered from all over the internet, and uses this database to essentially "guess" what the answer probably is.
A lot of the time, this works just fine! And the tech's getting better every day. Still, exercise caution whenever you're using generative AI, whether for school work, to study, or just for fun.
Explore AI Tutor Pro today, and share your feedback with the Contact North team. Their entire mandate is improving teaching and learning, so they'd love to hear your thoughts!
Explore the AI Tutor Pro app today