On Friday, February 14, 2025, the Learning Informatics Lab hosted Dr. De Liu from the University of Minnesota. In this talk, Dr. Liu discussed his approach to enhancing learning engagement and performance through SmartPal, a digital learning assistant that integrates with Canvas. He also discussed the design of SmartPal, findings from a randomized field experiment on the effects of integrating AI chatbot and gamification, and highlights opportunities for research enabled by the SmartPal platform.