SCUIRREL or Science Concept Understanding with Interactive Research RAG Educational LLM is an AI course assistant that will help you check your knowledge on specific topics through means of a guided conversation. Your course instructor will have set up the topics and concepts that SCUIRREL will be able to discuss with you.
When you first access the application, you will need to create an account so you and the admins can keep track of your interactions and progress.
- You will receive an access code from an administrator
- Create a new account by filling out the new account form, providing all required information and the access code
- Once the account is created successfully, you can login with your new credentials
In case you forget your password or need to reset it, follow these steps:
- Click the reset password link under the login
- Type your username and click the Request reset code button
- Contact an app administrator (e.g. someone who provided you the access code when you first created the account) and receive a reset code
- Once you have the code, go back to the rest form and now set a new password and put in the code
- If successful, you can login with your new password
If you have been given a group access code by an app admin or instructor, you can click the join group button in the SCUIRREL tab and enter this code to get access to a new set of discussion topics.
You can select a topic from any of the groups you have access to. Once you click the start conversation button, a chat window will appear and SCUIRREL will revise the chosen topic with you.
SCUIRREL will lead this conversation by asking you a series of questions about the topic you have chosen. Based on your answers, you will be able to progress to the next concept on the topic which is visualised as a progress bar at the top of the chat window. Once you successfully revised all concepts related to the topics, SCUIRREL will end the conversation.
Although your conversation is recorded, there is currently no way to save your progress on a specific topic and thus quitting the app means you will have to restart next time. This also means you can revise a topic as many times as you like, as SCUIRREL will start from scratch each time.
In addition to a conversation on a topic, you might also be able to take quiz questions that your instructor has set up for you.
- Click the Take a quiz question button. NOTE: If this button is not visible, it means that there are no quiz questions for this topic available
- A random quiz question is selected and you select the best answer
- After clicking the Check answer button, you will see whether you choice of answer was correct and why
- Once finished with a question, you can close the pop-up window
- If you like to take another question, click the button again. If there are no more new questions to take, old questions will be shown again
SCUIRREL is an experimental application that is trying to evaluate the use of large language models (LLMs) in the classroom. Your feedback is very important to us and will help us improve the application and figure out how we can best use it to help you in your learning. There are two main ways you can provide feedback:
NOTE: In-app feedback is not actively monitored by the administrators, so in case of serious or pressing issues you should still reach out to them as well
SCUIRREL has been configured to be as helpful and accurate as possible, but in the end it is just a large language model with a fancy wrapper around it. If at any point in the conversation you feel SCUIRREL is not helpful, not providing incorrect information, giving inappropriate responses etc., we would like you to report this part of the conversation so we can look into it an hopefully improve its performance. To report:
- Select all messages you want to report. Note that we have access to the full conversation so to try to be specific on which messages are most relevant to the issue.
- Click the "Report" button at the top of the chat window (don't use the general feedback button on the right)
- Fill in the feedback form and provide additional information if possible
- Submit the form
On the right-hand side of the app is a feedback button that allows you to provide general feedback on the application itself (design, usefulness, bugs, etc.).
- Click the general feedback button (right hand side of the screen)
- Fill in the feedback form and provide additional information if possible
- Submit the form
GIven this app has been designed for research purposes, multiple data endpoints are collected. Depending on the configuration of SCUIRREL, the following is collected:
- Completely anonymous: Every session starts from scratch and there is no way to keep track of your progress, though all interactions and conversations are recorded anonymously
- Semi-anonymous: Your were provided a random access code that is used to keep track of your progress, but this ID is not linked to any personal information other than a self -chosen username. You should not be identifiable you as long as you are not providing any personal information in the chat or feedback
- Fully identifiable: You were asked to provide your name and email when given access to SCUIRREL. This information is visible to your instructor and any administrator who have been granted access to your data. This option does allow your instructor to potentially track your progress and provide more detailed feedback or guidance.
IMPORTANT: In all cases, all of the chat messages you send to SCUIRREL are stored in a secure database and can be accessed by your instructor. This is done to help your instructor understand how you are interacting with SCUIRREL and how to improve its performance or evaluate its educational effectiveness
It is possible your data is used for research purposes, but you should be notified and this will always be done in accordance with the institutional research protocols. Note that data used in research will always be anonymised before being published.