A chemical engineering professor turned his own lecture notes into an AI study tool. It can only answer questions from what he actually taught.
That's the concrete example behind Florida State University's broader AI push, showcased this summer at Google's headquarters in New York.
What FSU Actually Built
Ralm Ricarte, an assistant professor in the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering, built a custom notebook for his Introduction to Thermodynamics course. It draws only from his own lecture notes, course materials and problem sets.
This is a specific, concrete example of AI in education done narrowly and carefully, not a sweeping campus-wide chatbot rollout.
The tool runs on Gemini Notebook, formerly known as NotebookLM. It restricts its answers strictly to whatever sources a professor uploads, and provides citations for every response.
Students can turn those uploaded materials into study guides, practice quizzes, and video or audio overviews. That's a meaningfully different approach than an open-ended chatbot answering from general knowledge.
The distinction matters for academic integrity concerns specifically. A tool that can only cite a professor's own lecture is harder to misuse. It can't generate answers the class never actually covered.
FSU associate vice provost Paul Marty demonstrated the thermodynamics notebook at Google's Higher Ed Leader Series Conference this summer. The event brings together university presidents, provosts and chancellors to discuss AI strategy in higher education.
Why This Isn't Just About One School
Marty is one of 30 academic leaders nationally selected for Google's 2026 GSV Higher Ed Leader Fellows cohort. The group meets monthly to examine how AI is reshaping higher education broadly.
That cohort structure matters here. FSU's specific implementation choices are being directly compared against dozens of other research universities.
Those universities are working through the exact same questions in real time.
"We may be there ostensibly to talk about AI in higher education," Marty said. "But what we're really talking about is the future of higher education."
FSU is also a formal Gemini for Education partner. It's part of Google's AI for Education Accelerator program, which provides tools aimed at productivity and personalized learning.
The Real Test: Does It Help Students Learn
Marty's most substantive point wasn't about the technology itself. It was about how students actually use it.
"The person who does the work does the learning," Marty said. "If all a student does is copy and paste, they aren't learning."
That's the real question any AI-in-education tool eventually has to answer, regardless of how it's marketed. FSU's Academic Center for Excellence runs regular workshops on this specifically. The goal is teaching students to use these tools responsibly, rather than just handing them out and hoping for the best.
What This Means for Miami
This adds a genuine, specific example to the AI in education debate. MAIN has tracked that debate through FSU's separate agentic hiring research this month. A citation-restricted study tool built from a professor's own course materials is a meaningfully different bet.
That's a different kind of tool than a general-purpose chatbot doing a student's homework for them.
For Miami's universities and school districts building their own AI in education strategy, the Gemini Notebook model is worth studying. Not just for its capabilities, but for its guardrails.
Restricting an AI tool to a teacher's own vetted materials, with mandatory citations, is a design choice. Other institutions can copy it directly.
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