AI Conversation – 3900.100
Blackboard Learn SaaS
Ultra Experience
Ultra Course View
Impact: All users
Related Topic: AI Conversation
It's tough to have 1:1 conversations with every student, especially in large courses. Some instructors are asking students to use AI services for topic-related activities to help. But, with many services and limited instructor visibility, results can vary.
To better serve instructors who want to use AI with students, we're launching a new activity called AI Conversation. This is a Socratic questioning exercise guided by AI. AI Conversation lets students explore their thoughts on a topic.
There are two elements to the activity:
- AI Conversation
- This lets students think critically about the topic that the instructor designs.
- Reflection question
- This asks the student to share their thoughts on the activity. The reflection question also lets the student flag any bias or errors from the AI as part of our Trustworthy AI Approach. Reflection helps students understand the responsible use of AI services.
Instructors have the following configuration options:
- A topic for the AI Conversation
- An AI persona including a name, avatar (can be uploaded or generated), and personality trait
- Complexity level of responses
- Edit the reflection question, guiding the student on how best to reflect on this activity
On submission, the instructor can review the AI conversation transcript and the student's reflection. The AI Conversation is a formative assessment by default, but you’re not restricted to this option.
Image 1. Instructor setting up a topic, AI Persona, and Reflection question
Image 2. Instructor previewing the AI Conversation before making it visible to students
Image 3. A Student participating in the AI Conversation
Image 4. Instructor view of a submitted AI Conversation and reflection question
For administrators: In the building block, ‘AI Design Assistant and Unsplash,' a new option called ‘AI Chat Conversation’ is available. The default state is 'off.' When this feature is ‘on,’ the privilege needs to be assigned to course roles as necessary, such as Instructor. The privilege that needs assigning is ‘Use AI Design Assistant.' When that role creates an AI Conversation in a course that’s visible to students, students will be able to complete the activity. Note that toggling this feature to ‘off’ after deployment will stop the AI Conversation services. Therefore, any AI conversation activities visible to students will not operate as expected.