What is the AI Course Assistant block?

The AI Course Assistant block contains two tools:

• An AI Course Assistant - an interactive assistant to help answer questions about your course by uploading and training it on your syllabus, a Q&A document, and selected course materials from eClass.
• An AI Learning Companion - can act as a tutor to help students explore and quiz themselves on a subject related to your course materials.

By default, neither of these tools are available to students, allowing you to upload content, explore and test before releasing them to students. 

Adding the AI Course Assistant block to Your Course 

1. Navigate to your course in eClass
2. Enable Editing mode by toggling the Edit switch in the top right corner. 
3. Expand the side bar on the right (if necessary) by clicking on the red arrow pointing left
4. Click Add a block
5. From the drop-down menu, select AI Course Assistant (If this is your first time adding the AI Course Assistant block, you will be prompted to accept an AI policy.)
   

   

   
    
6. Wait patiently; The initial setup may take 30-60 seconds as it creates a dedicated AI agent for your course 
7. When ready the block will appear 
   

   

   
    

Uploading your Syllabus 

With your syllabus uploaded, the Course Assistant will be able to provide information about your course when queried, such as “When are the major assignments due?” or “How much are quizzes worth?”, provided that information is included in the syllabus. To use this feature you must ensure your syllabus is formatted correctly, download both the example file and the syllabus template file provided to ensure the compatible layout is maintained. 

Prepare your syllabus

1. Click Upload Syllabus in the AI Assistant block 
2. Expand and review the information under the Important heading to either download a template or review instructions on how to correctly format your syllabus. (An incorrectly formatted Syllabus will yield incorrect results)
3. Use the template file to create your syllabus. (If modifying your own syllabus, be sure to include clear headings and sections as per the instructions)
4. Save the file in .docx format.

Upload process

1. Click Upload Syllabus in the AI Assistant block
2. Select your syllabus file (If you upload the wrong file, you can click the up arrow in the block, or use the trash can icon to remove it and re-upload) 
3. Drag & drop the file into the designated area or click Choose a file to select the file
4. Click Save changes to initiate training
5. Monitor the training status badge
6. Upon completion, from within the AI Course Assistant block, the Syllabus has a status Trained indicating successful processing by the AI tool. 
   
    

Training can take time, as it is based on the document size. The AI will not respond to student queries until training is complete AND you've made the assistant available to them.  

 

 

Test out the AI Course Assistant 

By default, your AI Course Assistant is in the bottom left hand corner and not available to students (The line through the icon indicates it is hidden). Clicking on the Al icon will launch the chat window and you can start asking questions. Note: if you do not yet see a ‘Trained’ status message next to your uploaded content, Al will not be ready to answer your questions.

 

 

 

 

Uploading a Q&A file to the AI Course Assistant

Creating and uploading a Q&A file will allow the AI Course Assistant to address some of the common questions that flood your email inbox about your course. As you go through the upload steps you'll find a template and an example (which probably includes many of the questions you already have about your own course!) 

Upload your Q&A document

1. Click on Upload Q&A File from the AI Course Assistant block:
    

2. Expand the Help section to see the question template and sample question file:
   1. Questions Template: Structured format for Q&A pairs  
   2. Questions Example: Sample questions to guide your creation, we bet this covers some of your own questions already!
3. Prepare a .docx file with Q&A pairs according to the template or example
4. Drag & Drop the file into the designated area or click Choose a file to select the file
5. Click Save changes to initiate training
6. Monitor the training status indicator
7. Upon completion, the Q&A File has a status Trained indicating successful processing by the AI tool.
8. Ask your AI Course Assistant a question and validate the results! 

 

Add additional content to the AI Course Assistant

You can also train the AI Course Assistant on your existing eClass content so that students can ask questions about the material. In addition, any course material that has been trained will allow the AI Learning Assistant to use it as a basis for self study for students if you choose to enable it. 

Learn about how to train on additional content in your eClass course 

 

Make the AI Course Assistant available to students

Finally, when you are ready for students to start using the AI Course Assistant you can select Enable AI Course Assistant for Students in the AI Course Assistant block.  Students can begin to interact with the AI Course Assistant once enabled.