TLDR: Professor Abdussalam Alawini and his team at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s Siebel School of Computing and Data Science are developing advanced AI-driven personalized learning systems. These systems are designed to enhance student learning and assessment, particularly in complex subjects like database programming, by providing tailored support and tracking individual progress at scale.
Professor Abdussalam Alawini, a distinguished teaching associate professor of computer science at the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science within The Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, is at the forefront of integrating artificial intelligence into higher education. His pioneering work focuses on developing personalized learning systems that leverage AI as a backend to revolutionize how students learn and are assessed, especially in challenging areas such as database programming.
Alawini’s motivation for this initiative stems from the inherent difficulties in effectively tracking and supporting a large student body, often numbering close to 500 students per class. He noted, “I couldn’t track them at any point in time except by looking at papers. Since joining Illinois, I have made it my mission to automate and utilize automation to provide more support to students.” He further explained that even before the recent surge in generative AI, he found standard machine learning techniques from the early 2000s to be highly beneficial for instructional purposes.
The personalized learning systems being developed by Alawini and his team are designed to provide comprehensive support across various topics. A key application is in database programming, where students engage in group activities to solve problems. Alawini highlighted the complexity of grading such assignments, stating that solutions can be arrived at in numerous ways, some efficient and others overly complicated. Manually examining the work of 400-500 students, divided into over 100 groups, is incredibly time-intensive, a challenge he addresses by deploying machine learning.
This innovative project is supported by a renewed Systems and Infrastructure Innovation Program (SIIP) grant and aligns with the Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network (KEEN) Mindset Framework. The team’s approach involves meticulously tracking student progress and providing structured knowledge to Large Language Models (LLMs) to enable them to function effectively as virtual instructors. Alawini clarified the depth of their system, emphasizing, “It’s not just giving an LLM a bunch of documents to see what a student submits for one particular assignment and giving feedback. It’s about tracking the student life cycle throughout the system, getting all these performance metrics, understanding the context of the course, the course material, the structure of the course material, and the prerequisite connections between the topics introduced in the course.”
In early summer 2025, Professor Alawini further demonstrated his commitment to advancing AI in education by leading a multi-day faculty development workshop at the University of Illinois, titled ‘Enhancing Entrepreneurial Mindset Through AI,’ in collaboration with KEEN partners. He also noted the free use of ‘Illinois Chat,’ a UIUC AI Chatbot platform developed by co-investigator Volodymyr Kindratenko, by students, with their usage being tracked to gather insights.
The cross-disciplinary team behind this initiative includes Alawini, Volodymyr Kindratenko (NCSA, ECE), Sotiria Koloutsou-Vakakis (CEE), Tomasz Kozlowski (NPRE), Christopher Tessum (CEE), Meredith Blumthal (ACES), and Maryalice Wu (CITL). Their proposal, ‘Exploring the impact and potential of Generative AI in Engineering Education,’ aims to integrate generative AI into STEM education, empowering students to explore problems, investigate diverse solutions, and identify innovative approaches beyond traditional methods. They are also focusing on qualitative research, conducting surveys, and observing student interactions with generative AI to inform and influence future policies regarding its use in education.
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Professor Alawini’s dedication to teaching excellence has been recognized with the University of Illinois’s 2024 Campus Excellence in Undergraduate Education award.
