The Questions Students Don't Ask: How Faculty Used AI to See Them

Every course has students who struggle silently. They don't come to office hours. They don't raise their hands. They nod along in class and fall behind alone. Most faculty experience this "silence" problem every semester. But faculty can't answer questions students don't ask, and students don't always ask when they need to. This session shares what happened when faculty at Xavier University (Cincinnati) deployed faculty-controlled AI teaching assistants to solve the silence problem in graduate and undergraduate courses. In a Dean and Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE)-supported evaluation in Spring 2026, participating faculty gained something they never had before: real-time insight into what students asked about outside of class—at 11 p.m., between lectures, and the night before an exam. Faculty gained new evidence of student learning and engagement, and students gained 24/7 access to a teaching assistant that cites and references their professor's course materials with each response. In this session, we present student and faculty feedback, platform usage analytics, and lessons learned from the evaluation. Two presenters, one the platform's creator and both faculty participants, will share insights and discuss what changed about how they teach. In the final segment, attendees with existing Canvas accounts will onboard live and experience the platform with their own course content.