Nominee
AI in Teaching &
Learning
Reinventing textbook reading for the digital age. IRead is an interactive textbook reading tool that combines knowledge visualization and natural language processing techniques to provide a new and individualized learning experience for students. The tool is accessed through a webpage interface using computers or tablets. IRead aims not only to facilitate navigation through the content but also to transform the reading experience into an individualized, engaging, and participatory process.
Implementation of the Project/Course
We implemented our co-developed textbook reading tool, IRead, as replacement for a digital textbook files in the ETH Zurich course Production and Operations Management. This course is taught as a standard semester course for ca 200 students from several departments at ETH Zurich. Through IRead, students asyncrhonously access the textbook “Introduction to Manufacturing: An Industrial Engineering and Management Perspective.” By offering a fresh and modern reading experience tailored for students, we aspire to overcome the limitations of traditional textbook engagement methods. An open-access trial version of IRead can be accessed at https://iread.ethz.ch/ IRead was first used in the fall semester 2024. Students were given individualized log-in access for IRead. We assess the effectivenes of IRead by correlating use time with exam scores in light of qualitative insights from student feedback. While this assessment method is imperfect, we did not want to provide selevtive access to IRead in form of a controlled experiment. We note that the objective of IRead is not to make everyone read the same amount of text, since learning preferences and reading skills differ, but rather to individualize the textbook experience to different needs. If we can get 5-10% more students to engage more with the textbook than they would have done without IRead, we see the project as a success. The presence of IRead is of course not hindering the use of traditonal physical or electronic copies of textbooks. IRead is of course only one element of this course, and not the only innovative one, but it is the focus of our submission to this year’s KITE Award.
Motivation, Project Mission, Vision Statement
How can we motivate more students to engage more with textbook materials? In a time with cometing deigital media and reduced attention spans, this question stands as a crucial yet challenging objective. Textbooks still remain quality-assured and important sources of learning across fields. Inspired by the recent advancementsin expansive language models and human-centric AI, we leverage cutting-edge large language models and innovative text visualization techniques when developing an interactive tool that assists students’ reading and learning experience: IRead.
Innovative Elements
The IRead tool is innovative since it introduces new didactic methods for engaging textbook materials—not commonly used for textbooks. It allows students to interact with a textbook in a new way, connect materials dispersed across chapters, and self-assess progress via a question-generating learning bot.
Effects on Student Learning
Assessing the causal effects of IRead on learning would require a controlled experiment. This was however deemed ethically problematic to implement, potentially (dis)avantaging a group of students. Therefore we report the effects of IRead on learning in two different ways: 1) An auxiallary analysis used a controlled experiment outside the class with promising results: see Zhang, Dörig, Cui., Netland, Sachan (2025) Harmonizing Assistance: Moderating Visual and Textual Aids in AI-Enhanced Textbook Reading with IRead, International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education. 2) From the implementation in the ETH course in 2024, we proxied engagement with IRead as (a) reading time and (b) highlighting behaviors. We find that the 65 students who actively engaged with IRead spent on average 5.3 hours reading despite the book being optional. We find highlighting positvely correlates with exam scores. Yet, we caution drawing conclusions from this regarding IRead’s effectiveness.
ETH Competence Framework
-
Personal
Competencies
Subject-specific Competencies: IRead is specifically designed to assist students in learning textbook materials. It’s primary purpose is to transfer more knowledge through an engaging and more individualized learning experience.
Personal Competencies / Self-awareness and Self-reflection: IRead provides students insight into their learning effectiveness and discipline, for example by prompting questions during highlighting, allowing students to reassess if they learned what they read.
Personal Competencies / Self-direction and Self-management: IRead helps student focus their reading time for example by allowing students to explore concepts that are distributed across a textbook.
Which Elements of Your Project Would You Recommend to Others?
IRead has excellent transferability. As a web-based tool, IRead can be used across textbooks and courses. It is currently deployed at ETH servers and can be integrated into commercial learning platforms and ETH’s ETHEL project. One possible vision is to make IRead the one-stop platform for all textbook materials: A kind of «Spotify for texbooks.» One potential inhibitor is textbook copyright issues. A publisher, Routledge, has indicated interest in the tool. We are currently completing auto-integration upgrade in IRead, which would make integration of new books happen with a click. The tool can be integrated in Ethel or Moodle in a next step.
