Lecture Recall is a ChatGPT EDU–powered tool for students. It supports review, search, and reflection on course content by providing an AI chat interface tailored specifically to your course materials. Then, when students ask ChatGPT a question about your class, they receive cited links to the exact segments of your class recordings when you discussed the answer. It helps ChatGPT move from generic bot to a helpful student assistant for your course.
Access requirements:
- Teaching an upcoming Wharton MBA or WEMBA Course
- "All Access" to Class Recordings
What Is Lecture Recall?
Lecture Recall gives students a powerful way to review your course material. Driven by a vector search into your class recording transcripts, as well as any additional files uploaded by the teaching team, the bot adheres quite closely to your content. It also has purview of the entire course, allowing students to review topics comprehensively.
If you are interested in learning more about how the chat works, please see Richard Waterman's published paper on Lecture Recall.
What Is a Synchronous Chatbot?
People tend to think of chatbots as asynchronous: meaning the bot has access to all the material from the start, and it acts as a subject matter expert. This isn't ideal for two reasons:
- Sessions are in order for a reason, and end-of-course content can be confusing if taught at the beginning.
- Courses change over time, aka the content that the bot is prepared with is necessarily distinct from the real sessions that students have in the class.
Lecture Recall uses actual class recordings and matches your students to their section's recordings, so when they click through to see the videos, they can recognize being in class at that moment. If we were pedagogically inclined, we'd posit better retention and recall with this approach... But since we aren't, we'll just say that's pretty neat.
How to Use the Service
Wharton Lecture Recall has an administration and dashboard interface for faculty and TAs. If you cannot access this dashboard, please send us an email to set up your course (support@wharton.upenn.edu). Key features include:
Lecture Recall automates ingestion of lecture transcripts from your class recordings, but you might want to include other sources of information. We support:
- Usage Dashboard
- Custom Instructions for your Course
- Automatic Ingestion of Lecture Videos (transcripts only)
- File Uploads – We support .txt and .md files, and you can write in LaTeX or other syntaxes that will be recognized by chatgpt and streamed to students.
- Asynchronous Content – Attach additional Panopto folders to make asynchronous content searchable.
Lecture Recall Interface Demo for Instructors and TAs
Managing Lecture Recall During Exams
We recommend turning off access to Lecture Recall during exam periods—unless your exam is intentionally designed to be used alongside the GPT. To temporarily restrict access:
- Open Lecture Recall App
- Select your course
- Check the "Private Course" Checkbox
After the exam is over, you can restore access by unchecking the "Private Course" checkbox
Sample Canvas Announcement for Lecture Recall
Lecture Recall is a generative-AI study assistant - a custom GPT inside UPenn's ChatGPT Edu workspace - that lets students revisit, search and quiz themselves on recorded class sessions. This tool is now available for this class! If you haven't used Lecture Recall before, it takes about 30 seconds to install the plugin (Find instructions at Lecture Recall for Students) and ask "What courses can I study?" All currently enrolled students should see this course listed.
Support
Contact: support@wharton.upenn.edu
Support Hours: 9am–6pm ET, Monday–Friday
Response Time: Within 1 business day
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What types of materials should I upload to improve the GPT’s accuracy?
A: We recommend uploading course notes, equations, and any organizational knowledge about the course material. Transcript excerpts are quite detail-oriented, so for high-level comprehension, course notes can help the bot connect the dots between concepts.
Q: Will students be able to use Lecture Recall after the semester ends?
A: Not at this time. Access is tied to the course term. GPTs are archived at the end of the semester, although students can save or download citations and notes during the course.