Article #7 of AI in Education Article Series: April 2025
Learn about Cogniti, a generative AI platform that educators can use to create their own AI agents.
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Superpower: Finding op shop trinkets
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Stella’s work spans psychosocial risk management and strategy facilitation.
She is passionate about creating equitable and inclusive solutions with a focus on uplifting historically disadvantaged groups. Stella enjoys exploring how innovative research and real-world analysis can drive meaningful change for communities.
Stella holds a Bachelor's in History and Political Science, and a Master’s in Policy and Governance from the University of Canterbury. Her Master’s dissertation looked at how Te Tiriti o Waitangi has been applied to Aotearoa’s health system and how this has differed from the aspirations of the Waitangi Tribunal in the WAI2575 Report.
Around the globe, companies are developing and releasing standalone AI products – but what options exist for non-developers who want to build their own AI tools? AI platforms such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure AI are just a few of the options available for individuals with no prior developer experience to build, deploy and manage AI tools. Another option designed with educators in mind is the AI platform, Cogniti.
This article is the seventh in a series titled “AI in Education”, aimed at education providers interested in AI. The intention is for this series to act as a beginner’s guide to the use of AI in education, with a particular focus on AI agents. This series is being developed as part of a project to develop an AI agent for learner oral assessment, funded by the Food and Fibre Centre of Vocational Excellence. We invite you to follow along as we (Scarlatti) document our learnings about this exciting space.
The following article provides an overview of Cogniti, a generative AI platform that enables educators to create their own AI agents. We acknowledge that other similar tools are emerging (e.g., Mindjoy), however, these appear to be less well-known in Aotearoa. Therefore, we focus here on Cogniti. In this overview, we look at examples of the AI agents that have been created using the platform and how you might decide if it is right for your learners, organisation and content.
Cogniti is a generative AI platform designed to enable educators to build custom AI agents. Since its soft launch in October of 2023, educators from 30 institutions in Aotearoa, Australia and Singapore have produced more than 600 AI agents through the platform. Last year (November of 2024), they held a Cogniti Symposium, showcasing the various use cases of Cogniti-based AI agents and garnered interest from over 3,000 registered attendees.
We have reviewed the Cogniti website, news articles that mention Cogniti, and a recent Cogniti symposium programme agenda to further under Cogniti’s features and users.
This review suggests that Cogniti can be used to develop AI agents that:
This review also suggests that Cogniti users are:
Given this, the platform seems most suitable for educators wanting tools to help enhance delivery of learning (e.g., via tutors, mentors, etc), and to do so via writing. At this stage, formal assessments (via writing or oral) may require a custom AI agent.
The below flowchart is a starting point for deciding which type of tool (e.g., Cogniti or a custom agent) as well as which format (written or oral) might be best for your students, organisation and content.
[1] As mentioned earlier, this functionality exists but does not appear to have been used widely.
Cogniti is a powerful platform to create AI agents for use in education. So far, it seems best suited for agents that support the delivery of learning and are text-based. However, we see a strong value proposition for oral assessment agents for the VET sector. We think this because in VET (in comparison to universities):
An AI agent capable of conducting oral assessments could help bridge these challenges by enabling learners to demonstrate competency verbally, in a flexible, accessible, and supportive way. It may also allow assessors to efficiently verify understanding without the need for time-consuming written submissions, aligning more with the practical nature of VET education.
Questions that we are asking for our own AI agent:
Interested in following our journey into AI?
