This Lightning Talk will review a newly developed educational tool called Figment Mentor under development at MUSC. Students select and create an interprofessional colleague avatar and ask interview questions to learn more about different professions and how their own profession participates in collaborative practice. The system uses a large language AI model to respond to students’ interview questions. Figment Mentor was used in assignments in two different interprofessional courses. Approximately 200 interprofessional students were enrolled in these courses and completed the assignment. The purpose of the assignment was two-fold 1) to expand what students know about their own profession and that of another profession with whom that they may collaborate and 2) to give students an opportunity to use and evaluate an AI-based based interview tool. The Figment Mentor assignment was designed to meet three learning objectives: 1) enhance knowledge of the roles of other professionals on a team, 2) appreciate the importance of interprofessional teamwork, and 3) identify strategies for continuous learning about the roles of other professionals. Students were provided sample questions in different topics (background, trends, insights, advice, accuracy) as well as follow-up questions similar to what questions would be asked in a “live” interview with an in-person professional. Students were then asked to respond to four reflection questions about the assignment and the use of an AI-generated professional.
The course directors also used Generative AI to assist with the evaluation of this new assignment and students use of a GenAI tool. Student responses to the reflection questions were loaded into ChatGPT to analyze for themes and counts of negative and positive responses to the assignment. The course directors and MUSC Office of Interprofessional Initiatives faculty reviewed the ChatGPT analysis. A traditional thematic analysis was also conducted by the course directors and faculty.
The overall consensus of students and faculty is that Figment Mentor can be used successfully as an alternative educational tool. Students’ overall reflections were positive. They concluded that use of Figment Mentor was beneficial to learn about other professions who may be unavailable for a live, in-person interview for a variety of reasons. Several lessons were learned by the OII faculty when using GenAI to conduct a thematic analysis of the students’ responses. Primarily, the prompt used to request the thematic analysis, the upload and format of the student responses, and format of ChatGPT’s response and count of responses.
