Transforming higher education through AI innovation

The University of Tasmania (UTAS) is recognized for their excellence in teaching, research and innovation. With campuses across various cities, UTAS fosters a collaborative community of students, researchers and industry partners. But their complex academic processes slowed personalized support and innovation. Navigating course materials, gathering research documentation, obtaining ethics approvals and handling administrative submissions were time-consuming and inefficient for both students and researchers—resulting in delays and hindering innovation.

To address these challenges, UTAS needed a scalable, intelligent solution that could simplify workflows, accelerate decision-making and free up time for creativity, discovery and collaboration—while upholding ethical standards and ensuring safe deployment of AI technologies.

UTAS partnered with IBM to reimagine how AI could support learning and operations. The journey began with the AI CourseMate project in the School of ICT, where students and researchers co-developed an AI assistant using the IBM® watsonx.ai® AI Studio. Specifically, the IBM watsonx Orchestrate solution acted as the core platform for all agents, enabling students and researchers to low-code/no-code tools to simplify access to course materials. They used the IBM watsonx.governance toolkit to monitor, track and manage all AI models.

Hosted on the IBM Cloud® platform, the initiative helped introduce agentic AI into university systems, empowering UTAS to shift from manual processes to intelligent, scalable solutions. This implementation not only showcased AI’s applicability beyond the classroom but also highlighted the importance of responsible AI development and deployment.

The collaboration between UTAS and IBM delivered significant results in both learning and operations. The AI CourseMate prototype empowered students to co-create intelligent agents that simplified access to academic resources and reduced manual tasks. The solution helped achieve a 90.9% response accuracy and an 88% application success rate through agent-automated processing.

Hosted on IBM Cloud, the minimum viable product (MVP) validated the potential of agentic AI solutions to streamline administrative workflows and provide intelligent support to students and staff alike. This initiative has improved operational efficiency, fostered cross-faculty collaboration and provided students with real-world AI experience—showcasing how academia-industry co-design can create scalable, ethical AI solutions.

The University of Tasmania (UTAS), the state’s only university, is globally recognized for excellence in teaching, research and sustainability—ranked #1 worldwide for climate action. With campuses across Hobart, Launceston, Burnie and Sydney, UTAS drives innovation and hands-on learning to solve global challenges and create real-world impact.