Katharine Meyer
@katharinemeyer.bsky.social
Higher education policy researcher | would rather be reading | https://kem3e.github.io/
This Thanksgiving, my eight year old is thankful for quality higher ed 😂 We’ll maybe hold off on debt-to-earnings conversations until she’s a few years older…
November 27, 2025 at 2:59 PM
This Thanksgiving, my eight year old is thankful for quality higher ed 😂 We’ll maybe hold off on debt-to-earnings conversations until she’s a few years older…
Especially excited about our drop-down visualization of the campus-based programs (work study & FSEOG) at the state level, so you can see exactly how much cutting a program would impact different colleges in your state. Here's Louisiana as an example:
June 5, 2025 at 3:48 PM
Especially excited about our drop-down visualization of the campus-based programs (work study & FSEOG) at the state level, so you can see exactly how much cutting a program would impact different colleges in your state. Here's Louisiana as an example:
A savvy team of technology experts, financial aid administrators, and student support professionals could absolutely put together a better bot than Aidan that's still safe and accurate (see below for a response that misses the mark)
But that's clearly not the team ED has working on this effort.
But that's clearly not the team ED has working on this effort.
February 13, 2025 at 10:17 PM
A savvy team of technology experts, financial aid administrators, and student support professionals could absolutely put together a better bot than Aidan that's still safe and accurate (see below for a response that misses the mark)
But that's clearly not the team ED has working on this effort.
But that's clearly not the team ED has working on this effort.
Again-maybe frustrating. Shouldn't the gov't chatbot be able to tell me about a related gov't deadline? But Aidan clearly has guardrails to not respond to questions that have no match in the content knowledge base. Like when I asked who the third president of the United States was:
February 13, 2025 at 10:17 PM
Again-maybe frustrating. Shouldn't the gov't chatbot be able to tell me about a related gov't deadline? But Aidan clearly has guardrails to not respond to questions that have no match in the content knowledge base. Like when I asked who the third president of the United States was:
Sometimes we trade the lack of precise answers in a non-generative chatbot with the trust that it won't go off script. I asked Aidan when taxes are due-a human would tell me April 15 (so did Copilot), but Aidan looked for a match & told me when I could figure out the due date for my student loans
February 13, 2025 at 10:17 PM
Sometimes we trade the lack of precise answers in a non-generative chatbot with the trust that it won't go off script. I asked Aidan when taxes are due-a human would tell me April 15 (so did Copilot), but Aidan looked for a match & told me when I could figure out the due date for my student loans
That doesn't mean there's not room for improvement. I asked Copilot the same question, and that tool gave me more details (what the max. award is, what factors determine grant amount), though the links were less useful than Aidan's
February 13, 2025 at 10:17 PM
That doesn't mean there's not room for improvement. I asked Copilot the same question, and that tool gave me more details (what the max. award is, what factors determine grant amount), though the links were less useful than Aidan's
The article references the current "rudimentary A.I. bot" at ED-Aidan. I'm not 100% sure, but since Aidan launched in 2019 it might still be "non-generative." What does that mean? It likely draws on a well defined "content knowledge base" of answers to different versions of questions asked:
February 13, 2025 at 10:17 PM
The article references the current "rudimentary A.I. bot" at ED-Aidan. I'm not 100% sure, but since Aidan launched in 2019 it might still be "non-generative." What does that mean? It likely draws on a well defined "content knowledge base" of answers to different versions of questions asked: