Ian Scheffler
Imagine that you’re a first-year student in the Master of Computer and Information Technology (MCIT) program, Penn Engineering’s most popular online degree. You’ve spent hours on a coding assignment, only to encounter the same bug, over and over.
You could post a question on the online discussion board, but, like many MCIT students learning from around the world, you don’t live in the same time zone as the teaching assistants (TAs). To stay on top of your courses, you need trustworthy answers now.
Enter Jean, Penn Engineering Online’s proprietary, AI-powered chatbot. Drawing on private course materials and discussion board data — resources commercial chatbots can’t access — Jean provides rapid, reliable answers. Named after Jean Bartik (GED’67), one of the women who programmed ENIAC, the chatbot is revolutionizing how students engage with coursework.
“Jean is able to respond almost instantaneously,” says Chris Callison-Burch, Professor in Computer and Information Science and the Director of the Raj and Neera Singh Program in Artificial Intelligence’s Master of Science in Engineering AI Online. “Students can be up at any hour of the day, in any time zone, and get an answer right away.”