Columbia University Virtual TA Service

This document provides instructions and best practice guidelines for the creation and usage of the Virtual TAs.

Please keep in mind that CUVTA is still a work in progress, and this is an early version of the service. You may encounter bugs or unexpected behavior. If you would like to report a problem or provide feedback, please send us an email .

Creation

1. Go to the creation page
2. Enter your email and the instructor key we shared with you, then press ENTER
3. Carefully fill in the details of the new VTA - you will not be able to edit it later!
4. Click "Submit"
5. Copy the assistant key and save it for future reference - it will only be displayed once!

Click "Try it out →" to open a chat with the newly created assistant

Usage

1. Go to the chat page
2. Paste the assistant key you saved after creation and press ENTER
3. You can now chat with the assistant
4. To start a new chat, refresh the page (the previous chat will be lost!)

Tips and Guidelines

• If you are unsure about the purpose of a specific field, hover over the ? symbol next to it for additional information.
• Since we do not yet support editing existing assistants, you will have to create a new one each time you want to make a change. Thus, it could be useful to save your "Additional Instructions" in some document to avoid rewriting them each time. You may also want to save all the files you want to upload to the assistant in a centralized place to make reuploading easier in the future.
• Make sure to save the assistant key whenever you create a new assistant - a new key will be generated each time!
• We strongly suggest uploading at least the class syllabus to give your assistant the necessary context to be useful to the students. In addition, you can provide lecture notes/slides, class readings, papers, textbooks, etc. - most forms of text files should work (.txt, .pdf, .docx, .tex, .md, ...). We also recommend giving each file a descriptive filename. The more context you provide, the better.
• If you believe that some important information is not reflected in the files, you can provide it in "Additional Instructions". This could include lecture times and locations, useful links such as class website or ED, important updates, specific instructions for assistant's behavior, etc. - feel free to experiment and recreate the assistant as many times as necessary. You can view our default prompt here.
• If your class maintains a Google Calendar for OH, you can provide it to enable fast and accurate retrieval of information about the upcoming office hours. Hover over the ? symbol next to the calendar id field to learn how to enable this functionality.