Blackboard Help » Frequently Asked Questions: AI Conversations

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For students and colleagues

These FAQs answer common questions about using AI Conversations in Blackboard, including how activities can be created, how students interact with them and what academic colleagues can see after an activity has been submitted.

If an academic colleague creates an AI Conversation, including for formative assessment, can they see the student's conversation with the AI?

Yes. Once the student submits an AI Conversation activity, the instructor can view and review their work.

The initial focus of AI Studio is slightly different: it is designed to give students equitable access to AI and support the development of their AI literacy. If AI Studio is introduced into specific course workflows in the future, we would expect the student's activity within those workflows to be visible to the instructor.

What kinds of AI Conversation can an academic colleague create?

AI Conversations currently support two types of activity: Socratic questioning and role-play.

Socratic questioning encourages students to explore a topic through continuing questions, while role-play allows a student to work through a scenario with an AI persona.

An AI Conversation also includes a reflection question, giving students an opportunity to reflect on the activity and identify possible errors or bias in the AI's responses.

Can an academic colleague try an AI Conversation before making it available to students?

Yes. Academic colleagues can preview an AI Conversation and interact with the AI persona as a student would before releasing the activity.

This is strongly recommended, as generative AI can produce inaccurate or biased responses. Previewing the activity provides an opportunity to check that the instructions are clear and that the AI persona responds in an appropriate and useful way.

Does an academic colleague have to create an AI Conversation entirely from scratch?

No. Blackboard's AI Design Assistant can help generate an AI Conversation. Colleagues can specify the type of conversation, provide additional instructions, adjust its complexity and choose relevant course materials to provide context.

Blackboard can generate suggestions for elements such as the conversation title, AI persona and reflection question. The academic colleague should review and, where necessary, edit the generated activity before making it available to students.

What happens after a student completes an AI Conversation?

An AI Conversation includes a reflection question as well as the conversation itself. The reflection gives the student an opportunity to consider what they learned from the activity and to identify possible bias or errors in the AI's responses.

Once the student submits the activity, the instructor can review the student's work.

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