UM-Dearborn Canvas Maizey Connector
U-M Maizey is a tool, utilizing OpenAI’s OpenGPT4-Turbo, that allows U-M faculty, staff, and students to enrich their GenAI experience based on a custom dataset they provide. When using the UM-Dearborn Canvas Connector as the data source, Maizey can be thought of as a chatbot that has specialized knowledge of the course - like a student-peer who has read all the course materials. It is important to note that both Maizey and the Canvas Connector are new technologies and will be continuously improved over time by the Emerging Technology team at Ann Arbor.
Instructors who would like to have a Maizey created and connected to one of their Canvas courses (an official course or a WIP) may submit a Maizey UM-Dearborn Canvas Connector Request for each course which they would like to have a Maizey created. Requests will generally be responded to within one business week.
Faculty Questions and Answers
Here are some questions you may have around this new pilot tool:
Official Banner courses or WIP courses from UM-Dearborn’s Academic Canvas. The Maizey Canvas Connector is not available for Professional Development Canvas at this time.
Ann Arbor is covering the cost of Maizey through the end of the 2023-2024 academic year. After that, UM-Dearborn’s ITS will cover the cost of Maizey use with the UM-Dearborn Canvas Connector through the pilot phase. Usage and cost information discovered through the pilot phase will be used to determine how Maizey will be funded in the future.
Maizey may be able to give students some guidance when an instructor not be available to immediately answer questions. Maizey may also help students locate where specific material is covered in the Canvas course, as it will attempt to reference the source of its responses. It may improve the overall student experience by providing immediate responses to students, though students should always check the responses for accuracy as GenAI does not always provide accurate information, sometimes confidently providing wrong information.
Once the Maizey instance is set up to use the UM-Dearborn Canvas connector, students will be able to log in to Maizey and find the course listed there. A link to Maizey can also be added to your Canvas course navigation menu as part of the setup, which Digital Education staff would do for you.
Maizey will index the published/unlocked and available to student information from the following areas of a Canvas: Announcements, Assignments, Files, Modules, Pages, and Syllabus. Maizey does not currently index captions/transcripts from course videos, nor does it index quizzes or discussions.
Data is only available for courses which the instructor has requested a Maizey Canvas Connector. Maizey does not have any general access to UM-Dearborn's Canvas instances.
No, Maizey will scan the course content available to students when it is first installed/configured. If content is changed or new content is made available after that (even if just by date settings in Canvas), the instructor of record will need to log in to Maizey and request that the source course material be re-indexed.
For privacy reasons there is no access to student prompts or AI responses for faculty or campus staff or administrators, though Maizey developers at Ann Arbor have access to this information to further develop and refine Maizey. If the use of the course Maizey instance or other GenAI tools is required, students may be asked to screenshot or copy/paste their prompt and the response they received and submit that as an assignment.
While there is no general access to prompts and responses, please keep in mind that they may be subject to Freedom of Information Act requests in the future.
Not necessarily. Even when using data from a Canvas course, generative AI systems can hallucinate and provide incorrect information quite confidently. Instructors who request a Maizey for a course should advise students to always double check the information provided for accuracy. Instructors are encouraged to test Maizey themselves by utilizing a WIP course and asking questions they think students might ask, before requesting a Maizey for an official course with students.