Akhilesh Rangani (Computer Science) has played a pivotal role in developing a bespoke generative AI model, AI voice reader, responsive design, graphic design, as well as back-end and front-end web development. He has previously used the Flutter framework, Dart, and speech recognition technologies to  develop an AI voice assistant phone app with a user-friendly interface. For the AI Tutor on this website, Akhilesh used JavaScript and Next.js framework and trained the model on a pre-defined dataset that contains the content of this online textbook.

    Misty Trunnell (Research Services Librarian), Dr. David Ettinger (International Affairs Librarian), and Dr. Bo Yang (Instructional Designer) have provided guidance on open licenses and open education resources. Valerie Fliss (Resource Sharing Specialist) assisted in identifying permalinks and open-access versions for further readings.

    Ananya Lal has conducted beta-tests on AI features and the site’s content. 

    The AI project is entitled Trustworthy AI and Higher Education, and Prof Joubin is the project Principal Investigator (PI). Professor Alexa Alice Joubin is in charge of project design, fund raising, dataset preparation, research writing, and project deployment. Akhilesh Rangani is in charge of back-end and front-end web development as well as the design of the proprietary AI on this site.

     The AI and this web-based textbook project is supported financially directly by a George Mason University Institute for Humane Studies grant,  Open@WRLC (a Washington Research Library Consortium initiative), Elliott School of International Affairs Undergraduate Research Assistant Award, the George Washington University Public Interest Technology Scholar fellowship (2024-26) and Adapting Course Materials for Equity Faculty Grant (2024).

     It has been supported indirectly by the Online Course Development grants in 2021 and 2023, GW Digital Humanities Institute, Trustworthy AI Initiative, the NSF Institute for Trustworthy AI in Law & Society (TRAILS), and GW Coders.

     This textbook has been peer reviewed by university professors in the fields. Special thanks go to Professor James Dunnigan, member of the Artificial Intelligence Learning Futures Collaborative at Arizona State University; Professor Sid Monroe Williams, Assistant Professor of Theatre, and Professor Kylie Quave, Assistant Professor of Writing and Anthropology, at George Washington University.

     These grants and teams enabled Professor Joubin to create this AI-powered, openly licensed, open-access, online textbook with interactive learning modules.