VCU Tech Services Provides 60-Day Gemini Pro for Education Pilot
During the Fall 2025 semester, 50 members of the VCU community—including faculty, staff, researchers, and students—embarked on a 60-day pilot program to test the capabilities of Gemini Pro for Education. This initiative examined how Gemini Pro could be integrated into the university’s daily academic and administrative workflows within its Google Workspace environment.
The pilot participants utilized Gemini Pro in various areas and contexts, including Development and Alumni Relations, School of Business, and Information Systems. The versatility of the tool was highlighted through several key applications:
- Academic Support and Research: One participant noted that the tool helped compile overlapping subject matter and provided cross-references from reputable sources.
- Teaching and Instruction: Faculty members leveraged the technology to enhance student learning. One participant created a Gemini “Gem,” a customized Gemini-powered assistant, to help faculty generate realistic legal case scenarios for teaching analysis skills. Similarly, a participant serving as a Graduate Teaching Assistant used the tool to draft rubric-aligned feedback for student submissions to improve turnaround time.
- Administrative Efficiency: Staff participants focused on streamlining operations. Use cases included automating assessment compliance reports, creating formalized meeting agendas, and summarizing long email threads. Another participant utilized Gemini to revise wordy slide decks in Google Slides into high-level synopses, saving significant time on revisions.
Our final feedback survey provides further insight on pilot participant experiences. The chart below identifies common applications of the tool among participants.
Productivity and Time Savings
The feedback from participants was overwhelmingly positive regarding efficiency. Several users reported saving one hour or more per day by using Gemini Pro for tasks like writing emails, creating content, and finding information.
One participant noted that Gemini Pro helped overcome the “blank page hurdle,” providing a jumping-off point for documents. Another participant highlighted that NotebookLM alone saved them at least 10 hours over a 30-day period, allowing them to focus on projects that had been previously sidelined by a heavy workload.
Challenges
While the pilot demonstrated great potential, participants identified several areas for improvement:
- Slide Generation: A common frustration was that Gemini often generated slides with infographics as images rather than editable text and graphics, making revisions and data visualization frustrating.
- Data Accuracy and “Hallucinations”: In a guided learning mode for students, a faculty participant noted that because Gemini did not always have direct access to specific datasets, it would occasionally provide incorrect solutions or “hallucinate”.
- Tool-Specific Limitations: Users found the Gemini in Google Sheets less helpful than other features, noting it struggled to access data across multiple sheets or handle complex technical analytics.
- Sensitive Data and Security: Some participants expressed concern about security, wishing for the ability to process CAT 1 data safely. Prompt injection was also cited as a major concern.
- Ethical Considerations: Participants wrestled with the question of when it’s appropriate to use the tool and when it’s not, expressing concerns about the temptation to automate everything and what is lost if we overrely on generative AI tools.
Next Steps
Our pilot of Gemini Pro for Education provided an excellent opportunity for VCU members to experiment with one of the more powerful generative AI tools available. Technology Services is currently exploring options for providing access to the tool. Stay tuned for more news soon!
Categories AI Resources, AI Technology Pilot