The AI Conversation is a type of graded activity that we can add to our courses. These conversations are intended for the student to reflect what they have learned through a dialogue with an AI created for this purpose.

The activity consists of two parts: the conversation itself, which can be limited in the number of messages, and a reflection question that the student can answer.

There are two types of conversation:

• Socratic questions. This type of conversation helps the student with the topic chosen by the instructor by asking questions related to that topic.
• Role play. This type of conversation has the student interact with an AI that assumes the role created by the instructor.

Adding an AI Conversation

Click the + in the course body and select Create. In the panel, under Participation and Engagement, click AI Conversation.

Give the activity a title and add the maximum number of grading points. You can mark this activity as extra credit by checking the box.

We start with the configuration. The first step is to choose the type of conversation: Socratic questions or role play. Simply click on the chosen one to proceed to configure the topic to be addressed (in the case of Socratic questions) or the scene (in the case of role play). For both options, you will see a link to consult examples.

In Conversation Restrictions we can limit the number of messages and/or minutes available to the student during the activity.

We will finish by configuring the AI Persona. We can assign an image, give a name, and finally—very important—provide instructions and personality to the AI that will converse with the student. These traits and data are invisible to the student.

We finish by selecting the complexity of the responses, and save.

You can review a preview of the conversation after saving it, even test its functionality and edit if necessary.

Generating AI Conversations

You can generate AI conversations using the generative AI features of Blackboard. To do this, click on Generate conversation automatically. The generation options include generating a title, a persona, and a reflection question, which you can check in the options bar. PYou can learn about the rest of the generator’s configuration options in this article.

Select from the generated conversations and click Add.