Getting the Band Back Together
A few weeks into the semester, and I’m finally getting a moment to properly introduce this term’s studio team: Noura, Aya, and Bashayer my new AI teaching assistants at Zayed University. After last semester’s trial, students asked for them back, so instead of bringing the old crew out of retirement I built a new set aligned to the new courses and the kinds of questions those studios actually generate.
They live inside ChatGPT, where many students are already working anyway. The role isn’t to hand out answers. It’s closer to a late-night studio partner: unpacking briefs, diagnosing why an animation feels wrong, suggesting a next step when a project stalls, or helping someone decide what to try before the next class. I don’t see the conversations themselves, only the scale of them, and the amount of back-and-forth tells me they’re being used as intended.
This doesn’t replace teaching. It stretches the studio beyond scheduled hours, keeps momentum alive between sessions, and gives students a place to think through problems while they’re actually making the work.
