Beyond Help Room: How HiTA Keeps Students Connected
When reviewing mid-semester evaluations for my introductory financial accounting course, one student shared, "I wish the help room was open later... sometimes the only time I have to go is around 8 or 9PM and it's not available then."
Admittedly, my initial reaction was to be frustrated with this comment. As a dedicated instructor of over 500 students per semester with a team of only 10 student assistants, our team constantly strives to balance the demands of student support. Despite offering structured office hours and a weekly help room, the sheer scale of the course makes it difficult to meet every student where and when they need assistance—particularly outside traditional hours.
To bridge that gap, I introduced HiTA.
HiTA is an AI-powered tutoring assistant built directly from my course materials. It provides around- the-clock support, giving students a way to ask questions, check their understanding, and reinforce concepts at their own pace. For many, it became a vital supplement to our existing support systems.
Getting started with HiTA was remarkably simple. The platform was intuitive to set up, with minimal technical overhead. Within about an hour, I was able to upload my course materials and explore the multiple implementation options—ranging from interactive practice activities to quiz-based review tools. I appreciated having flexibility in how I could layer HiTA into my course, knowing it would align with the structure and pace of our content delivery.
What made me even more confident in implementing HiTA was twofold:
- it was trained entirely on my course-specific content, ensuring that students weren't being redirected to generic or potentially misleading information from external sources, and
- it didn't hand students the answers—instead, it encouraged them to reflect and conduct deeper analysis. The responses they received were accurate, aligned, and grounded in the structure we had carefully built throughout the semester.
Even more compelling, HiTA could point students back to exact lecture materials where a topic had been explained. This was transformational—not just for reviewing content, but for helping students draw connections across units, reinforce learning through repetition, and better understand the “why” behind the numbers. It shifted them away from memorization and toward conceptual mastery.
From an instructional perspective, HiTA was also incredibly low maintenance. Once the setup was complete, it ran in the background without requiring daily attention. I could view student conversations easily through the dashboard, which gave me valuable insight into where students were struggling, or which topics generated the most confusion. If desired, I could also customize student access to particular course materials or refine my set-up, normally only taking 20 to 30 minutes each week. This helped refine my teaching and better target areas in lecture.
Student feedback made the impact clear. One called HiTA a “nonjudgmental coach.” Another said, “HiTA was very helpful to me and kept me engaged with the course.” Others noted how beneficial it was to get quick answers after hours, especially when working independently or reviewing for exams.
Even for students who didn’t use HiTA regularly, its availability shaped the overall learning environment. It encouraged self-directed problem-solving and made it easier for students to revisit material with a specific question in mind. Many engaged more actively in their own learning process, using HiTA to preview topics or reinforce newly learned concepts.
After seeing the initial positive response to incorporating HiTA into my course, I feared we would see a drop in student attendance in lectures, help room and office hours. Why would a student make the effort to cross campus to attend an in-person lecture or to get help if they could get their questions answered online?
To my very pleasant surprise, HiTA was not a replacement for engagement, it was a catalyst for it.HiTA empowered students to keep going when they might otherwise stop, and to explore ideas more deeply before reaching out to me or the student team. Students who used HiTA in tandem with attending lectures, office hours and the help room were often among the most engaged and successful. The overall instructor rating for the semester averaged 4.91 out of 5, with open-ended comments reflecting a deeper sense of connection to the course content and support systems.
One student summed it up well:
“The help room and HiTA were very helpful to me and kept me engaged with the course. There are so many resources available for us to succeed in this class, and I really appreciate it.”
That feedback was a reminder that learning isn’t linear—and support shouldn’t be either.
As I begin planning for the next academic year, I am committed to keeping HiTA as a central part of my teaching strategy. It supports not only the content Iteach, but the habits and confidence students need to succeed beyond the course. In a subject like accounting that can feel intimidating or abstract to many, that kind of support matters.
HiTA won’t replace the human connection we build in class; it will allow us to extend that connection beyond the classroom and into the moments when students need it most to succeed.
About The Author
Allison Dellapelle