Bar-Ilan University pilots an AI study agent on the Moodle platform
Bar-Ilan University made an AI study agent available in 71 courses for approximately 2 400 students. According to Microsoft, it draws exclusively on materials provided by instructors and supports searching, summarising and practice through quizzes.
Bar-Ilan University launched a pilot of an AI study agent on the Moodle platform in February. The pilot covered 71 courses and approximately 2 400 students. Students can use everyday language to search for lecture topics, create summaries and practise the material using quizzes. According to Microsoft, the agent draws exclusively on materials uploaded by instructors, including lecture recordings, transcripts, presentations and articles.
KPMG and OpenApp developed the solution using Microsoft Copilot Studio and Azure AI Services. The agent runs in the university's Microsoft Azure environment and is available in Hebrew, Arabic and English. The article describes a plan to expand it to another 100 courses in the first semester of the 2026/27 academic year, which began in October.
The deployment also required content preparation. Instructor Eliyahu Biton describes revising course materials, adding lecture transcripts and academic texts, and repeatedly testing answers. According to him, routine and administrative questions from students decreased after the agent was introduced.
Student Yarden Shay says she studies for approximately three hours a day after lectures, compared with five to six previously. Biton recorded an average final exam score among approximately 50 students that was three percentage points higher than in previous years, but acknowledges that a stronger cohort could have been the reason. These observations alone do not demonstrate a general benefit from the agent.
Why it matters
The deployment demonstrates a concrete way to connect course materials with search and independent practice directly within a learning platform. The experience described also shows that this kind of support requires instructors to work on content and verify answers; making the agent available alone does not guarantee better learning outcomes.
Two audiences, two different impacts
What this means
For individuals
Students participating in the pilot can look up material they missed and have practice questions prepared from their course materials. They do not have to rely solely on notes from classmates.
For a business
For educational institutions, a similar deployment involves adapting course materials and checking answers. The experience of one instructor suggests the potential to reduce routine questions, but the article does not quantify the workload savings.
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