Moraine Park Technical College Launches AI-Powered Student Support Across 151 Courses in Its First Month

Overview

Moraine Park Technical College (MPTC) partnered with LearnWise AI to deliver scalable, always-on student support across its programmes. After piloting the platform in 12 courses during autumn 2025, MPTC completed a full college-wide rollout in January 2026, making AI-powered course assistance available to students in 151 courses within the first month of the spring semester alone.

Context & Challenge

MPTC’s journey toward AI readiness was, in the words of its Dean of Business, IT and AI Innovation, “a little backwards”: the college launched an AI Data Specialist AAS degree before establishing a college-wide acceptable use policy, meaning governance frameworks and staff readiness needed to develop alongside early programmatic ambition. This pragmatic, fast-moving approach reflected MPTC’s commitment to remaining relevant to an AI-enabled workforce, while also surfacing challenges that had to be addressed before broader rollout.

Key challenges the college sought to address included:

• Program tutors were difficult to recruit and were often unavailable during the evening and weekend hours when students most needed support.
• Student success and retention were strategic priorities, with leadership seeking tools to provide consistent academic support at scale.
• Faculty needed practical assistance with course design tasks including lesson planning, discussion topics, and quiz creation.
• A college-wide AI literacy survey conducted in January 2026 (196 respondents, 46% response rate) found that while 61% of staff used AI at least occasionally, 39% rarely or never did. The top barriers cited were lack of perceived relevance to their work (26%), insufficient training (22%), and limited time to experiment (14%).

These findings shaped an implementation strategy that prioritized student-facing support first, with staff AI literacy and governance built in parallel through a dedicated AI Cross-Functional Team and a formal Acceptable Use Policy.

Solution

Following its autumn 2025 pilot - which generated sufficient engagement data and positive faculty feedback to support an institutional purchase - MPTC selected LearnWise as its college-standardized AI platform and completed a full rollout in January 2026.

The initial deployment focused on the LearnWise AI Tutor, embedded directly in Canvas to provide students with curriculum-aligned tutoring on demand. Alongside this, MPTC began testing a LearnWise-powered chatbot on its public website and employee portal, with AI feedback and grading capabilities in early evaluation.

For faculty skeptical about introducing AI into their courses, LearnWise's built-in academic integrity guardrails proved to be a decisive factor.

"If a student asks LearnWise to complete an assignment, it'll say no, and then walk them through what it can do instead. That's a very nice selling point for our faculty, because if they're worried about anything with AI, it's students cheating with it."

The deployment was underpinned by a formal AI Acceptable Use Policy (PR 611.01, adopted November 2024, revised November 2025) establishing clear requirements around data privacy, output verification, intellectual property, and transparency. A college-wide AI Cross-Functional Team provided strategic oversight, and role-specific training pathways were designed to address the barriers identified in the staff survey.

Key Components of the Implementation

• Canvas-Integrated Course Assistant: Deployed at scale across all programs, providing course-aligned on-demand student support without requiring additional platforms or login steps.
• Formal Acceptable Use Policy: A clear governance framework prevented the entry of confidential institutional data into AI systems and established responsibilities for staff across all use cases.
• AI Cross-Functional Team: A cross-departmental governance body provided strategic direction, accountability, and coordination across the college’s AI initiatives.
• Staff Literacy Needs Assessment: A college-wide survey identified training preferences, barriers, and readiness levels, directly informing the design of role-specific training pathways and pilot programs.

Phased Expansion Plan: Following the Course Assistant rollout, MPTC began testing chatbot support on its website and employee portal, with AI feedback and grading capabilities scheduled for evaluation in subsequent phases.

Use Cases

In its first month of full deployment, LearnWise supported students across a broad range of programs and interaction types:

• Course navigation and logistics (19% of conversations), reflecting the value students place on administrative clarity at the start of a new semester.
• Study guides and summaries (17% of interactions), with students using the AI to consolidate and revise course content independently.
• Content explanation (13% of conversations), as students sought to deepen understanding of complex material between classes.
• Assignment help and quiz preparation, supporting students in structuring their academic work and preparing for assessments.

The highest usage was recorded in Nursing and Health Sciences (47.4% of all conversations), followed by Business Management (12.4%), Early Childhood Education (10.3%), and IT (2.5%).

Outcomes

In the first month of spring semester 2026 alone (17 January – 17 February 2026), MPTC students asked 5,436 questions across 555 conversations in 151 courses, with an average of 9.8 interactions per conversation. Peak usage occurred on Tuesdays, with the most active hour recorded at 7:00 PM CST, confirming that students are engaging with AI support well outside standard college hours.

Key outcomes from the first phase of deployment include:

• 24/7 Tutoring Availability: Students gained round-the-clock access to on-demand academic support, directly addressing the gap created by limited specialist tutor availability in many programme areas.
• Rapid Scale: 151 unique courses engaged LearnWise within the first month, reflecting strong faculty adoption & clear institutional momentum behind the platform.
• Broad Programme Reach: Usage spanned health sciences, business, education, and technology disciplines, demonstrating the platform’s flexibility across diverse content areas.
• Staff Readiness Insight: The AI literacy survey provided actionable evidence for designing training pathways, with 74% of staff expressing willingness to participate in pilots or focus groups and 45% preferring hands-on workshop formats.

Strategic Value

MPTC’s experience illustrates how a technical college can move from policy to practice at pace, even when governance and adoption are being built in parallel. For institutions seeking to:

• Provide 24/7 student support in programmes where specialist tutors are scarce or hard to recruit,
• Improve student success and retention through accessible, always-on academic assistance,
• Build staff AI literacy through evidence-based, role-specific training programmes,
• Establish a governed, standardised AI platform that replaces fragmented tool use across departments.

The Moraine Park Technical College deployment demonstrates how rapid, data-informed implementation - grounded in a clear acceptable use policy and supported by cross-functional governance - can deliver immediate, measurable impact for students from day one of full rollout.