A Humanities Discipline at UCLA Employs an Artificial Intelligence-Crafted Textbook
A University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) literature class, specifically Comparative Literature, will utilize an artificial intelligence (AI)-generated textbook in 2025. This will be the first instance of AI usage in a Humanities course at UCLA, despite having been previously deployed in an introductory history class during the most recent semester.
UCLA revealed the impending AI textbook in a blog post. The class, titled History & Fiction: Survey of Literature from the Middle Ages to the 17th Century, will be taught by Professor Zrinka Stahuljak, who is enthusiastic about the AI-driven course materials. According to her, the AI-generated resources enable them to focus more on refining analytical skills, critical thinking, and reading comprehension, which are professors' specialties. She pointed out that it's challenging to implement these skills effectively when teaching a large class of 300 students.
The company responsible for developing the textbook is known as Kudu. While I often feel frustrated with the escalating use of subpar AI in our lives, finding fault with Kudu is challenging. The textbook industry and the establishment surrounding it have long been a contentious issue. For decades, print presses have churned out costly textbooks, sometimes making minor adjustments to a few pages and releasing a new edition, charging students exorbitant prices.
Moreover, expensively-priced "access codes" further turned the screws on budget-conscious students who opted for cheaper, outdated textbooks, only to be hit with fees for a single-use code, potentially costing upwards of $100 for access to online resources.
Kudu charges students $25 per semester to access the textbook online, conceding the weight of a physical book.
As per Kudu and the ACLU, the course content was developed in collaboration with the professor. This isn't a straightforward process involving an LLM, but rather a custom-crafted textbook tailored to each class, demanding upwards of four months to produce. Professors like Stahuljak contributed previous course notes, PowerPoint presentations, and videos produced during remote teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic for the generation of the new textbook, according to UCLA.
Upon completion, the textbook produces an interactive learning tool. Once the content is generated, Kudu compensates the professor to review and critique the work. For this specific comparative literature course, content was examined by Professor Stahuljak and Jakob Johnson, a history major who graduated in 2024, according to UCLA.
The textbook consists of written material, videos, and coursework assignments. Kudu's website features a demo video displaying the Vlogging Brothers, Hank and John Green, discussing nuclear science and Roman history. The platform also includes a built-in chatbot to respond to students' queries.
The LLM is solely trained on the provided material and has no link to outside sources. Professor Stahuljak confirmed that the AI assistant's responses will be limited to the course content, safeguarding students from using ChatGPT to complete assignment tasks. Furthermore, Kudu claims to have a method for detecting students using AI systems to generate answers.
According to Stahuljak, utilizing Kudu will save her time and allow her to concentrate on her students rather than the coursework. “I used to dedicate lectures to introducing and contextualizing the material and providing visual aids to explain the content. However, now all that information is included in the textbook we created, allowing me to work with the students to analyze primary sources and help them cultivate critical thinking skills,” Stahuljak said.
The AI-generated textbook developed by Kudu, set to be used in the future UCLA literature class, leverages artificial intelligence and technology to revolutionize education. This shift towards AI in teaching is expected to free up time for professors like Professor Stahuljak, enabling them to focus more on fostering critical thinking skills and building student-teacher connections.
