Improving career readiness for university students

At Auckland University of Technology, Senior Lecturer Sarah Wymer created "Jack", an AI mentor modelled on the Auckland Football Club’s marketing manager. First-year sports marketing students use Jack to refine sponsorship proposals. The agent prompts deeper thinking about audience, creativity and commercial value without giving direct answers.

"One student mentioned that interacting with the agent felt like talking to someone who actually works in the industry," said Wymer. "Jack was designed to mirror how a club-side marketing manager would challenge ideas, asking the kinds of questions students don’t always expect in class."

The quality of student work produced using Jack reflects this shift. Wymer said several students began developing marketing proposals with more advanced thinking around sponsor integration, audience value and incentive design. This is the kind of commercial reasoning she would normally expect to see later in a degree, or after direct exposure to industry.

Leiden University in the Netherlands has deployed Cogniti across four faculties, reaching 2000 students, with plans to expand across three more. Applications range from basic subject tutoring to complex role-playing scenarios. For example, Psychology Master’s degree students can practice suicidal risk assessment through conversations with a simulated severely depressed patient, while pharmacy students can prepare for challenging interactions with an older customer whose medication isn’t ready.

"Role-playing allows us to bridge that gap between learning from a book and putting knowledge into practice," says Julian van der Kraats, Product Owner for AI and Automation at Leiden University. "These scenarios prepare them for interactions that are otherwise difficult to stage authentically."

Securing sensitive data to provide freedom to learn

A common thread emerges from these examples: Cogniti’s privacy and security infrastructure enables experimentation that public AI tools currently cannot. Students and educators need to trust that conversations remain confidential, data isn’t used for commercial training and institutions retain control over their educational content. 

Built on Microsoft Azure, Cogniti addresses these concerns by keeping student data within institutional control. The platform allows educators to analyse anonymised conversation patterns to improve their agents while giving universities the opportunity to develop AI applications aligning with their values and regulatory requirements.

"Security is always my primary selling point – any tool we use must be safe. However, added to that is Cogniti’s functionality that makes it easy for educators to get started and allows them to learn from their own data," said van der Kraats.

With Cogniti now available on Microsoft Marketplace, universities worldwide have the opportunity to adopt and customise it. For institutions navigating the responsible use of AI, the tool provides a path forward – preserving educator expertise while expanding what’s possible in the classroom.

"We’re at a point where this technology could really benefit education if used well and in a considered way," said Oldfield. "It’s not a quick fix. The important thing is making sure we’re designing these agents in a way that enhances learning for the student and doesn’t do the learning for them."