Examples of AI Tutor Use in Higher Education
Walden University
Julian™ is described as the Walden AI tutor, which utilizes Google Cloud’s AI and machine learning to enhance students’ understanding of concepts (AI-Pro, 2024).
Harvard University
A randomized controlled experiment was conducted at Harvard University, comparing student performance when participating in peer instruction (the control group) to that when students were working through the same lessons using an AI tutor (the experimental group). The study showed that students utilizing this AI tutor learned more than twice as much in less time and reported significantly higher engagement and motivation compared to those who participated in the peer instruction format (Kestin et al., 2024).
Uni-Distance Suisse
A semester-long study was conducted at Uni-Distance Suisse where a personal AI tutor app was provided to psychology students taking a neuroscience course. This AI tutor used GPT-3 to generate questions from course materials and then provided personalized learning. Students who actively engaged with this AI tutor achieved significantly higher grades, with an average improvement of up to 15 percentile points compared to a section without an AI tutor (Baillifard et al., 2025).
University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley)
The Open Adaptive Tutor (OATutor) is an open-source adaptive tutoring system that serves as a platform to deliver mathematics questions with hints. Its human tutor-authored hints were produced by UC Berkeley undergraduate students who had prior math tutoring experience (Pardos & Bhandari, 2024).
Stanford University
Stanford’s National Student Support Accelerator conducts research on the effectiveness of AI tutor systems, including recent research on topics such as the impact of matching AI tutor gender in the effectiveness of STEM education for girls (Bleiberg, et al., 2025) or the impact of virtual tutoring on early elementary school education (Robinson, et al., 2024).
State University of New York (SUNY)
In 2024-25, the SUNY system launched an initiative to implement an AI tutor for potential deployment across all campuses in the system. The project team worked throughout summer 2025 to finalize the requirements for the tutor and piloted multiple systems in fall 2025.
