AI Conversation Overview

It's tough to have 1:1 conversations with every student, especially in large courses. AI Conversation is specifically designed as an interactive activity in which students can actively participate. Instructors can create an AI Conversation in their courses, outlining a topic and an AI persona, and select the type of conversation for the students to engage in. Within the AI Conversation functionality, instructors can choose between two options: Socratic Questioning, in which the AI persona encourages students to think critically through continuous questioning, or Role Play, which allows students to play out a scenario with the AI persona. 

AI Conversation Best Practices

Consider these Best Practices when setting up an AI Conversation and guiding students in their experience with the tool:

• The more students put into the conversation, the more they will get out of it.  Providing thoughtful, clear answers will result in a better and more interesting conversation.  Encourage students to state a position rather than sit on the fence with their responses – just pick a side and see where the conversation goes.
• Be cautious of the conversation moving away from the original question and getting off topic.  The conversation does, however, remain broadly within the domain of the original question.
• Consider communicating the amount of time students should spend on the activity; otherwise, the interaction continues indefinitely and the questions are recycled, getting the student stuck in a loop.  Letting students know the extent of time they should spend participating in the conversation will provide parameters for effective use of the tool. 
• AI Conversation doesn’t like being asked questions but it can rephrase things when asked in a simpler form to better explain.
• Set the number of attempts on the exercise to multiple attempts to encourage students to try out different positions on the same topic (e.g. for/against, pro/anti, etc.) in order to gain better understanding of the topic.
• Consider multiple conversations on the same topic but with different personas (e.g. trait = supportive or trait = confrontational). This will give students a different experience and provide a tough conversation experience on the same subject.

Socratic Questioning 

This is a guided questioning activity or Socratic exercise. The AI persona will not confirm or reject any student response but moves students through a series of questions. At the end of the conversation, students reflect on the activity, highlighting weaknesses or strengths in their learning, or if the AI bot showed bias, hallucinations, or inaccuracies. On submission, the instructor will receive a transcript of the conversation and reflection, giving full transparency of the interactions. This is a great way to have a thought-provoking dialogue on the course topics without having individual 1:1's, which for larger or more complex courses, can be difficult to do. 

AI Conversation allows instructors to generate an image for the AI Conversation persona using generative AI. 

These functions are subject to the limitations and availability of the Azure OpenAI Service and are subject to change. Please check the relevant release notes for details.

 

Role Play

The Role Play feature lets instructors set up simulated conversations for their students by defining specific roles for both the AI persona and students. This interactive option enhances learning and training experiences by allowing students to practice communication skills in realistic scenarios, providing active learning opportunities. With customizable personality traits for the AI persona and contextual prompts, the Role Play feature fosters engaging and dynamic exchanges, enriching the overall learning process and encouraging critical thinking and consists of the following components: 

• Scenario: Information provided to students that shares details on the situation or scenario.
• Goal: Identifying the desired outcomes and take-aways to be achieved with the role-play exercise.
• Student Role: The role the student is to play in the scenario. Who are they in the scenario?
• AI Persona Role: The role the AI persona is to take in the scenario.

Instructors can customize the AI persona by assigning it a name and image. They also define the AI persona's personality traits and select the complexity of its responses. The personality traits assigned to the AI persona in this Role Play option shape its responses and interactions. 

Idea: Try reversing the roles of the Student and AI Persona.

A MESSAGE FROM ANTHOLOGY:

As part of our testing of this functionality, Anthology reviewed and discussed these outputs to determine if the functionality should be limited to avoid any bias or inappropriate output. We concluded that, on balance, institutions and instructors should have the academic freedom to let students engage in simulated conversations that may be controversial or biased. At the same time, we understand that there are limits to the output that the AI persona should be able to produce. Accordingly, Instructors are ultimately responsible for the output of AI Conversation and the dialogue students will encounter through the Role Play functionality. In our testing, the existing guardrails implemented by OpenAI, Microsoft, and Anthology prevented any output that was illegal or otherwise did not meet our Trustworthy AI standards. We will continue to monitor this feature and any related customer feedback to ensure we can make changes that may be necessary for this feature to meet our Trustworthy AI standards. 

EXAMPLE OF ROLE-PLAY CONVERSATION

 

Setting Up AI Conversations

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.

1. Go to create a new item on the Course Content page.

 

2. Select AI Conversation within the Participation and Engagement section of the Create Item menu.  Give your activity a title.  HINT: if this is a Role-Play activity, put the words "Role-Play" in your title to clearly convey what the activity is about.

 

Customize the AI Conversation

Step 1: Selecting the Conversation Type

Select the conversation type by choosing either Socratic Questioning or Role-play.

Socratic Questioning conversations encourage students to think critically through continuous questioning. Role-play conversations allow students to play out a scenario with the AI persona.

 

Step 2: Adding Student Instructions

Instructions need to be added to explain to students what the activity is about and what they are to do.

For Socratic Questioning, enter a topic of conversation in the content field. Make sure that your topic is open-ended and doesn't have a right or wrong answer. Select Next to move on to the next step. 

 

For Role-play, the instructions informs students the role they will play in the conversation, provides the scenario, along with the goals the student should try to achieve throughout the conversation.  Select Next to move on to the next step. 

 

Tip:  Consider adding Behavior Instructions for students to fully understand how they are to play their role:

 

Step 3: Setting up the AI Persona

Now, select a persona for the AI Conversation. You can provide your own image, use Unsplash image repository, or generate an image for the persona's avatar. Enter a name for the persona and briefly describe the persona's occupation, personality, or mood. You can also adjust the complexity of the persona's responses.

The personality traits significantly shape the interactions. Choose traits carefully and preview the conversation to avoid bias or otherwise inappropriate content.

IDEA:  Use a famous literary or historical figure to be your AI persona but hide it behind a pseudonym.

Select Save when you're finished. You can preview the AI Conversation as a student and interact with the AI persona by selecting Preview chat. 

Complexity of Responses

This sliding scale configuration option has nothing to do with the vocabulary level or length of sentences in the AI Persona's responses, but rather its overall responses.  

You should always preview an AI conversation before releasing the activity to students. AI tools can hallucinate and introduce bias. It's important to make sure that your instructions are clear and that the AI persona responds in an expected and appropriate way. As you test, adjust the Complexity of Responses slider scale to adjust the outcome of the AI Conversation.

Reflection Question

Image 1. Instructor setting up a topic, AI Persona, and Reflection question

You can edit the reflection question to guide your students on how best to reflect on the activity.

 

Testing the Conversation

An essential part of the development of an AI conversation is to try to "break it."  Only through extensive testing can the instructor be assured of how the conversation will develop and to verify that the outcomes or goals of the conversation are met.  TIP: Ask a colleague to test your AI Conversation!

 

Review Student Interactions

On submission, you can review the AI conversation transcript and your students' reflections. The AI Conversation is a formative assessment by default, but you’re not restricted to this option.

You have the option of reviewing general student activity for the assessment by selecting the Student Activity tab. 

Image: A Student participating in the AI Conversation

 

Image: Instructor view of a submitted AI Conversation and reflection question