The University of Delaware has been honored as a 2025 AWS Champions Award winner for its pioneering use of AI to transform an archive of recorded lectures into an intelligent, interactive study companion. The initiative, led by the Academic Technology Services (ATS) team, introduced UD StudyAide, a generative AI-driven platform that connects concepts across disciplines and delivers personalized study tools to students, enriching how they engage with course content.

Project Overview
With several hundred thousand hours of recorded lectures collected over 15 years, the University of Delaware saw an opportunity to unlock the hidden value in this extensive repository. The ATS team developed a knowledge graph using AI to link concepts, topics, and subtopics across recorded content, creating a dynamic web of learning relationships.

Once reviewed and validated by faculty, this knowledge base powers UD StudyAide, a tool that generates context-aware study aids such as flashcards and practice quizzes. These will be integrated into the university’s learning management system, offering students a powerful new way to deepen understanding, reinforce learning, and explore related material.

Challenges Addressed: From Passive Recordings to Active Learning
The primary challenge was to move beyond passive lecture playback and tap into the deeper connections embedded in course materials. Key goals included:

• Unlocking meaningful, structured insights from unstructured audio content 
• Enabling students to discover how topics interrelate across subjects 
• Creating interactive, personalized tools for studying and comprehension 
• Providing faculty with easy-to-use validation processes for AI-generated outputs 
• Supporting scalable, repeatable innovation that benefits both students and educators 

The project reflects a vision of education where AI supports human expertise and facilitates deeper learning experiences.

Results: Student Empowerment, Faculty Engagement, and Scalable Innovation
The impact of UD StudyAide is already being felt across campus:

• Faculty pilots launched in Fall 2024 and Winter 2025, with full student pilots starting Fall 2025 
• Faculty reviewers found validating AI outputs required only a few hours per course 
• Students in focus groups expressed high enthusiasm for early features like practice quizzes and concept maps 
• The ATS team partnered with UD’s School of Education to develop formal evaluation tools measuring student outcomes 
• Broader institutional engagement was achieved through AiM Higher, UD’s East Coast AI conference, which included a "Makerspace track" teaching participants to build knowledge graphs for their own institutions 

By combining AI capabilities with thoughtful academic oversight, UD is building a model that’s both innovative and replicable.

"We didn't want to just build something fast. We wanted to build it right from the very beginning." — Jevonia Harris, Lead Educational Software Engineer, University of Delaware

A Model for the Future of AI in Higher Education
The University of Delaware’s UD StudyAide project showcases how institutions can responsibly harness AI to expand access to learning, personalize study experiences, and unlock the full value of existing academic assets. With a solid foundation in AWS, human oversight from faculty, and thoughtful student engagement, UD is charting a path forward that blends tradition and technology for modern learners.