Safety is always a top priority when interacting with AI. Vetted by our IT team, general counsel and CETL, this bot is found to follow the industry standard data security and safety measures. However, there is always a risk due to the generative nature of AI. Please maintain a certain level of caution. 

When using this bot, never input student work, personally identifiable information (PII), or anything that might violate FERPA. Justin will always display a disclaimer to this effect prior to responding to the user's prompt.

Additionally, Justin is trained to only respond to campus-related teaching, learning and technology questions. Asking about outside topics will cause Justin to politely decline to respond and ask if you have any teaching or tech-related support needs. 

Justin has an intentionally short memory. All conversations within the bot do not train the main Chat GPT model. Only you can see your conversations within the bot. The only way to share your conversations is to click the "Share" button at the top right and share the link with someone. Please note that leaving the bot and returning will mean no historical memory of your previous conversation with Justin. Other faculty and users of this bot cannot see other people's conversations either.

Once you have a free Chat GPT account, the Justin support bot can be accessed via this weblink: https://chatgpt.com/g/g-67d03f0443148191b9e4d4af24dcd6d3-justin-cetl-support-bot 

Custom GPTs are accessible via a link by anyone. There aren't limits on the number of users with the bot. Users will need a free Chat GPT account to access. 

One limitation to be aware of is the messaging limits on free accounts. Check Open AI's website for the most updated limits, but free accounts allow for a certain number of prompts before requiring a 2-3 hour wait to replenish the available prompt count again. Keeping this in mind, make your prompts count! Saying "hi" or "huh?" may be wasting prompts.

Justin is trained to help with almost any andragogical or technical question that faculty members may ask. Here's a few tips to maximize your time with Justin:

1. Provide Context

   • Tell the bot basic course information so it may tailor it's suggestions to the appropriate subject area, learning level and more. 

   • Tell the bot your level of experience or comfort with the technology you're asking about.

2. Provide Preferences

   • Tell the bot how to give you step-by-step instructions. Do you want the whole list, or only 1 step at a time with the bot waiting for any questions you may have?

   • Do you want a full explanation, or a very concise list?

3. Explore Potential

   • Sometimes Justin can be more helpful than we even realized! Asking if there are any related areas it could provide support in might result in exploring new ideas. 

   • Explore some "what if" scenarios! (i.e. What if the LTI stops grade syncing? How do I troubleshoot?)

While customizable GPTs are a wonderful tool, it still requires the bot to interpret its knowledge base and try to answer all questions to the best of its ability. The bot is limited in the topics is may respond to, is given a list of uploaded documents to refer to and is instructed to never guess. If it doesn't know the answer, it is supposed to direct you to the CETL contact information. 

As always, there may be errors. Our faculty pilot and some IT testing showed a few minor errors, such as the CETL office hours, or claiming TXWES had a university license to an AI tool. Upon this feedback getting to CETL, corrections were made within the bot. These corrections are easy to include and only take 30 seconds to update. You may need to refresh your page, or go back to the link to see the updated bot.

In the event you find an error with the bot, please email cetl@txwes.edu.  We will immediately test the bot, make needed corrections and update. Feel free to share a screen shot, copy/paste of the incorrect response, or use the Share button at the top right to share your conversation with CETL, so we may see the issue.

Note: creation of a custom GPT required a paid Chat GPT account. Users of the bot do not need paid accounts.

Did you know you could create your own AI bot? It could be trained on your course topics, past experiences, needs, schedule and more! Now you could jump in with a request or prompt without needing to provide extensive context. Get personalized outputs with less effort!

Did you know you could create an AI bot for your courses? A custom GPT bot could act as a TA, tutor or student peer for the students in your courses. There have even been cases of course assignments being built within the bot itself and the student must interact with the bot to complete the assignment. There's tons of opportunity here! Students will only need a free Chat GPT account.

Stop by or book a meeting with CETL to get a full run down of how we trained our AI bot, lessons learned and more!