Elizabethtown College Computer Science majors Kaiden Miller ’28 and Joey Wagner ’26 are building an AI-powered tutor platform designed to support student learning and streamline academic assistance across campus.

Working under the guidance of faculty mentor and Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Jingwen (Jessica) Wang, the students are developing a centralized system that combines advanced AI tools to better the tutoring experience for both students and faculty.

Title of Research
JayWing Academy: An AI-Powered Student Learning System Leveraging GPT in Cloud Infrastructure

Student Researcher
Kaiden Miller ’28 and Joey Wagner ’26  (Computer Science majors)

Faculty Mentor
Dr. Jessica Wang, Assistant Professor of Computer Science

What are you researching?

Wagner and Miller: JayWing Academy is a software engineering project at Elizabethtown College developed to centralize all campus-wide tutoring into one platform. Our research aims to fill in the gaps of that platform by providing students with an alternative tutoring tool that combines the power of ChatGPT with the subject-matter expertise of Etown professors.

Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) is key to this process. RAG is a technique that enhances the output of Large Language Models (LLMs) by giving them information they would not previously have access to, such as lecture slides, notes, and assignments. In our system, professors upload these materials into a vector database to allow for quick querying. Students can then select their enrolled classes and query a model with the relevant context from the uploaded materials. Importantly, our system does not directly provide answers from a professor’s answer key, but it instead guides the student to the answer as a good tutor would. The result is a powerful, always-available academic support tool tailored to fit the needs of Etown students.

Why did you choose this topic?

Miller: I chose this topic because I thought that the idea of using an AI Tutor that uses proctor notes to help teach students seems like a very beneficial tool for students to use and I am very excited to see how we can work to implement this into a usable program for students here at the college. I also wanted to learn and practice my web development skills since I want to start a career in Software Engineering, and this project would be a great way to do this by comparing different chatting resources and creating our own User Interface for students to interact with this AI Tutor.

Wagner: Dr. Wang and Dr. (Peilong) Li reached out to me about joining this project. With the project’s heavy background in AI and Data Science, I was immediately intrigued. In addition to how this project aligned with my personal interests, I also saw an opportunity for real implementation. When they reached out to me, I had just finished a course called Software Engineering, where I developed JayWing Academy. During that project’s development, my partners and I had discussed an AI Tutor as a potential future work direction. I brought up the idea of creating this project as a feature for that platform. With support from the professors, I now saw a real opportunity for this research to be more than just a project, but an actual tool that could help students. That’s why I chose to join this research.

What is the most interesting aspect of this research?

Miller: The most interesting aspect of this research to me is the web design. The idea of taking all of this complex code using Artificial Intelligence and Retrieval-Augmented Generation to make a website that users can interact with is very interesting, and I want to be able to make these resources easily usable.

Wagner: Utilizing Retrieval Augmented Generation. RAG is not something currently taught at Etown. It seems to be kind of a niche aspect of Data Science, but with the little research I have done thus far, it seems really interesting and surprisingly simple. I am excited to expand my knowledge on this topic and tackle a full-scale implementation on it.

What are you hoping to accomplish through this research project?

Miller: I hope to be able to design a very clean and convenient user interface that makes the AI Tutor beneficial and easy to use for any student.

Wagner: My goal is not only to create a product that fulfills the basic project requirements, but to create something that can actually be used by students to help them study. I want this to be a tool people try and say, “I really want to use this again. I think it could really help me,” rather than being something students try once and move on.

Talk about working with your mentor. How have they helped you throughout this experience?

Miller: Dr. Wang has been a great help in taking this project from an idea to something that we can create. She assists us in our research by giving suggestions for issues, talking about different ways we can go about designing different parts of our project, and telling us about general SCARP information. Overall, she is a great resource to have throughout this project, and her input helps to push our research above and beyond.

Wagner: Dr. Wang is my primary advisor for this project, and she is such an important component of our team. She is the perfect balance of available and unavailable that forces us to learn and try things on our own, while also having a direct line of support when presented with crucial decisions. She’s the perfect point of reference when the project presents us with a fork in the road, and that, in some ways, is a testament to what we are trying to develop here. AI tools are great for helping Kaiden and I learn and implement something quickly; however, they do not share the experience and expertise provided by Dr. Wang. Using the two together, I am confident that whatever obstacles Kaiden and I face, we can develop this project past completion.

Hear from the faculty mentor – Dr. Jessica Wang

“I choose to be involved in SCARP because it gives students the opportunity to dive into real-world research while developing both their technical and professional skillsets. The most rewarding part is seeing their growth, from curious learners to confident researchers and developers. It’s a privilege to mentor them through that transformation.”