Purpose
Physician Assistant students work to the “medical model” to complete the Masters’ programme in two years. The short course duration coupled with the need to assimilate large volumes of complex study material, creates cognitive overload and learner anxiety. Consequently, our learners are resistant to the flipped classroom approach of the team-based learning (TBL) pedagogy. We used the AI chatbot or “bot” as an intervention for learners to manage cognitive load. In particular, the “bot” functioned as an AI-tutor, so learners could interact with it and ask questions or clarify concepts germane to the pre-assigned Physiology reading, prior to in-class activities.

Method
The “bot” is CHATGPT4.0, built into LAMS, an online authoring and learning platform that supports collaborative learning like TBL. The reading assignment is incorporated into the “bot” interface as a Word or pdf document file, two weeks prior to the TBL class. Students can login into the system, in their own time to interact (chat) with the “bot”.

Results
77% of learners found the bot helpful in understanding complex mechanisms or concepts, user-friendly, and for being factually correct. When learners were asked “What did you most like about the Chatbot?” they responded with comments like: “It was a quick way to improve understanding on topics from the revision quiz that we were unsure about” “It answered my questions succinctly” “The ease of asking questions and its bringing up the relevant information” “The ability to have a real-time answer based on resources given by the lecturer prior to today’s lecture”.

Conclusions
The bot personalised student learning experiences and promoted active engagement with TBL prep material. It precluded students from browsing the internet for irrelevant information, saving time and effort, increasing “germane load” and decreasing “cognitive load”. We aim to continue using the bot and evaluate its effectiveness in improving students’ confidence levels in answering readiness assurance questions.