21-11-2025
NOVA FCT takes a new step in its pedagogical innovation strategy with the launch of GIP Students and GIP Teachers, two Artificial Intelligence assistants built using Google Gemini’s Gems technology and customized by the Pedagogical Innovation Office (GIP).
More than a technological update, this initiative represents an invitation to renew teaching practices. As Gamby, Siemens, and LeBlanc warn in the manifesto The AI Tsunami Is Here: Reinventing Education for the Age of AI (EDUCAUSE, 2025), the omnipresence of Artificial Intelligence does not diminish the role of the university but rather clarifies it. While machines today excel at processing information, this frees us to dedicate ourselves with renewed energy to what is irreplaceable: dialogue, meaning-making, critical thinking, and the pedagogical relationship.
These new assistants are designed to support the academic community in transitioning from a content-delivery model to a deep, critical, and relational learning experience.
GIP Students: A Tutor for Critical Thinking
This assistant is designed to be a study companion that fosters autonomy. Unlike generic AI tools that merely provide answers, GIP Students acts as a Socratic tutor, promoting dialogic learning and co-construction of knowledge. Its role is to help students organize ideas, question sources, and solve complex problems, restoring to students the protagonism of their own learning and combating rote memorization. Access here.
GIP Teachers: Support and Optimization for Educators
Acknowledging the demands of the teaching profession, this consultant aims to support and simplify the daily work of teachers, researchers, and training technicians. GIP Teachers suggests ways to efficiently integrate digital tools (such as Moodle), saving time on administrative tasks so that educators can focus on what matters most: classroom mediation and close support of their students. It proposes simple and adaptable continuous assessment strategies that value the learning process. Access here.
“Technology should serve to humanize education, not automate it. With these new assistants, we want to provide our teachers, researchers, technicians, and students with the tools necessary to ensure that the classroom—both physical and human—remains the privileged space for knowledge construction, creativity, and critical thinking,” states the GIP team.
GIP is NOVA FCT’s transversal unit dedicated to promoting educational excellence. Its mission goes far beyond technology, providing integrated support to teachers, researchers, technicians, and students across all dimensions of teaching and learning processes. GIP’s work includes human resources training and capacity building, pedagogical support in physical classrooms, professional multimedia resource production, and specialized support in Moodle use. The ultimate goal is to create a rich, diverse, and people-centered learning ecosystem.
