IUPUI CyberLab Released the Rumi Digital Personal Assistant; Bringing AI into the Learning Management System

by Jillian Crist - October 22, 2020

Today, IUPUI CyberLab announced the release of its latest research and development project called Rumi Agent. Rumi is a digital personal assistant designed to run within a Learning Management System (LMS) and other educational tools like ePortfolios.

On October 25, 2020, the Rumi Beta was added to the production servers of the CourseNetworking (CN). CN users from over 160 countries can request to add the Rumi Agent into their CN account to try out the new AI technology and provide feedback. CN now is the first LMS and ePortfolio platform offering embedded AI (Artificial Intelligence) and machine learning integrated services.

Rumi is conceptualized and designed to think and act like a human being with persona, emotion, and intellect. It is designed to offer a growing number of services needed by learners and teachers. Rumi’s October 2020 release will offer services for jobs and Internships, community engagements, important announcements, tips on training teachers and students for online learning, and a fun game called "quote competition" that rates CN members' personal quotes.

The concept of Rumi was first published in an article in 2002 by Ali Jafari, who serves as the PI (Principal Investigator) and conceptual architect for the IUPUI CyberLab Rumi project. “I am very excited about the long-awaited release of the Rumi Agent into the CN production servers and to see it being used and improved by millions of CN users throughout the world,” said the Director of the IUPUI CyberLab and the CEO of the CourseNetworking, Professor Ali Jafari. CourseNetworking is offering Rumi as a free service to both licensed institutions and individual users. Students and instructors will not only enjoy the Rumi services within their CN account. They are all invited to participate in Rumi improvement by joining the Rumi development Network, ” said Jafari.

Rumi is the result of extensive research and development collaboration between a team of academic researchers at the IUPUI CyberLab and talented developers at the CN Company. Rumi was the basis of three theses at the Purdue School of Engineering and Technology. More graduate students and post-docs are joining the IUPUI CyberLab to continue the Rumi research.

The CyberLab is a research and entrepreneurship laboratory of the Purdue School of Engineering and Technology located on the campus of IUPUI. CyberLab is the birthplace for a number of highly successful education technology tools, including Oncourse (later Sakai), ANGEL Learning, Epsilen, and CourseNetworking.

Click here to schedule a discussion and demonstration of the Rumi or other CN products. Questions can be sent to CyberLab@iupui.edu.