Assign AI Conversations
Scholar provides a tool that allows faculty to set up an AI chatbot in their classes that will discuss course topics with students in various ways.
It’s important to note a couple of things about AI conversatons:
These will only appear to students if assigned by their instructor. The conversation will be part of an assignment and not just part of the class.
No instructor or student data is used to train the AI.
While these conversations may be useful, the chatbots are general-purpose and may get specialized information incorrect
Setting up AI Conversations
To set up an AI conversation, click the plus sign where you’d like the AI conversation to go and choose Create.
The Create panel will pop out. Under Participation and Engagement, choose AI Conversation.
Give the conversation a name at the top.
Choose the type of conversation that you want to assign
The two types of conversation are:
Socratic Questioning is set up for students to make statements on a topic, and the chatbot will ask them questions to help them think through an issue.
Role-play will let you set up a scenario with the student and the chatbot will play the scenario out.
Next, you’ll give the instructions for the student. The AI will see this as well, so be as thorough as possible.
The next step is to create an AI persona. Fill in the image with Edit image (you can choose any of the standard sources for images), and edit the name to match. The image and name will be shown to the student, but the “Personality trait” will not. The personality trait describes how the AI chatbot will act, so it’s important to fill out.
Click Save and your AI persona will be created.
To make sure it behaves as expected, you can click Preview Chat. This is highly recommended, as it will let you make changes to the information to make sure you get what you need from the students.
Once the AI persona behaves like you want it, you can customize the reflection question that students will complete after their conversation by clicking the three dots next to the reflection question and choosing Edit.
You can then set point values for both the conversation and the reflection by clicking on the pill and entering the number of points.
Clicking the gear at the side will give you the same assessment options as a test. See that article for information on how to set them up.
Grading AI Chats
Access the students' AI chats just like you would any other assignment. One way is to click the Submissions tab, then, click on the name of the student whose work you’d like to see.
You can also access a student’s chat by finding the cell representing their grade in the Gradebook, clicking on it, and clicking View Submission.
Either way, you’ll be taken to a grading environment very similar to the one for tests. Click the student at the left to switch between students.
The first thing that you’ll see on the right is a transcript of the chat. The AI chatbot’s statements are on the left and gray, the student’s are on the right and purple.
To give feedback, click the plus sign at the top to open a text editor.
Click Save when you’re done.
To grade the conversation, click on the grade pill and enter a score for the conversation portion of the assignment.
Scroll down and you’ll see the student’s reflection on their conversation. Use the same tools to comment on and grade the reflection.
Once you’ve got both items graded, the student’s conversation will be fully graded. You can then post the grade like any other grade.