Alicia Meehan, Campus Carrier deputy news editor

In Fall 2024, the ASC replaced student employees with an artificial intelligence (AI) program from the company Genio. Berry’s Academic Success Center (ASC) previously offered the role of note taker through the LifeWorks program. Students could request the help of a note taker as an accommodation. Note takers were paid the base rate of $9.25 per hour to write notes in class. 

Director of Accessibility Resources Katrina Meehan said that the note taker role had been in place since before she started working at Berry eight years ago. The role was an accommodation for students with disabilities that impact their ability to write or hear in class.

“The student client would be taking their own version of the notes and then supplementing with a note taker’s notes,” Meehan said. 

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the ASC supplied note takers with carbon copy paper, which enabled the note taker to keep a copy of their notes and give one to the client. The ASC would then give the student client the copied version. From 2020 to 2024, however, note takers scanned their written notes and submitted them digitally.

Meehan said that the note taker and the student client remained anonymous to each other to preserve student-client confidentiality.

Before being officially hired, note takers were required to take a 30-minute online course on the best ways to write notes as well as some shorthand techniques that would make the process quicker and the notes easier to understand. 

“[The course] talked about shorthand, like abbreviations that students could use when taking notes,” Meehan said. “As in, instead of spelling ‘about’ they could write ‘ABT,’ things like that.”

Meehan explained that the ASC made the switch to Genio due to the many errors that note takers made. Note takers missed portions or the entirety of classes, had poor handwriting, forgot to turn their notes in to the ASC, among other problems.

“Sometimes they withdrew from the class and never notified us,” Meehan said. “So, the student client would go weeks without receiving any notes.”

Genio generates notes based off of PowerPoints, PDFs and images students upload. Genio can also record the professor and write a transcript of the lecture. Recording a class is part of a student’s official accommodations. 

“With the number of issues we were having with human note takers, this system seemed like a good next step,” Meehan said. 

Meehan said that price was an additional factor in the switch to an AI program. Each student client required around five or six different students to take notes for them in their various classes. With Genio, the school only needs to pay one fee per student client, as opposed to the wages required for each note taker. 

In the ASC’s 2023-2024 survey, students complained of many issues with the note takers. According to Meehan, students said that their notes did not arrive in a timely fashion, note takers stopped taking notes or that the notes were incomplete or illegible. 

Senior Grace Anderson was a student client for the ASC’s note takers. She couldn’t write notes herself due to chronic pain in her hands and an auditory processing disorder associated with her ADHD. 

“My hands hyper-extend, and I have a lot of chronic pain in them,” Anderson said. “I also have mild arthritis issues in my hands, so it’s just really uncomfortable for me to write.”

Anderson objected to the switch to AI. She said that as an English and creative writing major, she opposes AI usage in writing.

“As someone who is an English and creative writing major, I’m just an objector to AI in general,” Anderson said. “I’ve seen where it can be a good tool, but not in my field.”

Anderson said that AI has the potential to be incorrect much of the time. AI dictation doesn’t always work due to accents or other interrupting noises. She also said that AI tends to hallucinate information that doesn’t exist.

“Dictation is not always the best,” Anderson said. “There’s a lot it doesn’t pick up on, especially if you have an accent. We’re in the South, so a lot of people have accents here.”

Anderson also said that she never used Genio after the change was made, because she was in classes that weren’t as notes heavy as her previous classes.

“I don’t know because I didn’t really experiment with it, but I just don’t see how a program like that would be effective,” Anderson said. “I’ve seen audio dictation programs before, and they never really do it correctly.”

Anderson said that although the process behind keeping note takers might be costly, it is worth keeping their authenticity over paying for a cheaper AI program. 

“They’re cheaping out by using a program, in my opinion,” Anderson said. “I would rather [have] somebody who’s actually been in the class, paying attention and trying to actively succeed in the class and take notes because they have an incentive to make correct notes for themselves as well.” 

According to Meehan, the ASC’s survey showed that students had minimal complaints about Genio. Some students said that Genio did not allow them to use multiple tabs at the same time, and one student reported inaccuracy in Genio’s transcription of a lecture.

“[Accuracy] can also differ based on where the student sits in comparison to the speaker, etcetera,” Meehan said. 

Meehan said that Genio may work better in some classes than others. Students might find more use for the program in their lecture-based classes in the social sciences than in problem-solving STEM courses. 

Meehan believes that the new AI program was the perfect fit to fix the past problems that came with student note takers.

“When we found the system that we utilize now, it just felt like a slam-dunk option,” Meehan said.