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The Audio Chat item type sets up an audio conversation with a AI bot. It can be used for practicing discussion about a topic, an article or a picture. The prompts to the AI bot are free text and editable. So you have considerable flexibility in how you set up the audio chat sessions.

You can try an audio chat here: https://demo.poodll.com/mod/minilesson/view.php?id=1840

An Audio Chat Session

A chat session in progress looks like this:

After the chat, AI will provide feedback and the chat transcript is saved so that it can be reviewed by both teacher and student.

The steps.

Step 1: Begin the session

The student should select the correct microphone (if more than one are on their device) and then press the "Start" button

Step 2: Wait for the session to commence

It takes about 15 seconds for the session to commence, at which point the AI will begin speaking.

Step 3: Chat!

The chat is audio only. The student's microphone will turn on automatically when the AI has finished speaking. But the student can click the mic to begin speaking at any time.

Key Controls

• Auto send - if checked will detect silence when the mic is on, and submit the students audio, and turn off the mic
  - if unchecked the student will need to stop the mic to submit the audio
  
  
• Microphone  - this will turn on automatically when it is the students turn to speak. But if clicked the student can interrupt the AI speaker and begin talking
  
  
• End - The session will continue indefinitely until the End button is pressed. The AI may prompt the student to click "End"
  
  

Adding an Audio Chat to a MiniLesson

1. From the Lesson Items tab, choose "Audio Chat"
2. Give it the standard settings: title, item instructions, and question text.
3. Set the prompts. AI requires two prompts: "Instructions for AI" and "Feedback Instructions for AI"
   Instructions for AI - Tells the AI how it should chat with the student.
   Feedback Instructions for AI -  Post-chat instructions that tell AI how to generate a grade and feedback text.
4. Set any additional information that you need for the chat if you are using placeholders , eg AI role, custom ai data 2
   Prompts can include placeholders, eg {ai role}. These are replaced at runtime with the actual value for the Audio Chat instance. See "Prompts, Prompt-Presets, Placeholders and AI Context Data" below for more details.
   
   

NB The AI can not see the title / question text / item instructions that you set in step 2. So if those are important for the running of the chat session, you should set the important details in the prompt or one of the placeholder fields.

Changing the AI Avatar

By default the avatar (image that represents the AI) is a cute brown Poodle. It is concievable that you want to use a different image. You can choose a different image from the list towards the bottom of the item's settings page.

Prompts, Prompt Presets, Placeholders and AI Context Data

The prompts that we pass to AI are crucial for the audio chat session to run well. Designing good prompts can take some time, and experience helps as well.  In most cases when you get your prompt running well, you will want to save it for re-use in different audio chat activities. MiniLesson adds two features for this purpose: "Placeholders" and "Prompt Presets".

Placeholders are variables that you can insert in your prompt. They look like this: {topic} {ai role}. The actual value for "topic" or "ai role" is set elsewhere in the audio chat item's settings. When the chat is run, MiniLesson replaces the placeholder with the actual value. In this way you can use the same prompt in different audio chats, and just change the topic or other placeholder data as appropriate. It is not required to use the placeholders, they are just useful tools.

On the Audio Chat item settings page some of the placeholders are grouped in the "AI Context Data" Section. Others are elsewhere on the settings page. The placeholders are:

• {ai role} - Free text. eg "helpful teacher" "job interviewer"
• {ai voice} - Drop down list of voices which is used for the voice, but can also be passed to the prompt.
• {target language} - The target language set in the MiniLesson settings.
• {native language} - The student's native language (probably for language of generated feedback text)
• {ai data1} - Free text.
• {ai data2} - Free text.
• {topic} - Free text
• {student submission} - The student's submission in a previous item in the lesson. This can be passed into the prompt for a follow up chat.  

The placeholders can be used in the prompt however you like. There is no need for {topic} to contain topic information, it could just as easily hold "holiday destination" information if that was what your prompt needed.

Prompt Presets are saved prompts that can be selected from a dropdown in the Audio Chat item settings page. By default there are three prompt presets: "Open Discussion" , "Discussing a picture" and "Discussing a passage." To add your own (at the time of writing) you need to be a site administrator and they are added under:
Site administration -> Plugins -> Activity Modules -> Poodll MiniLesson -> Audio chat

Reviewing Student Submissions

After the chat, the student and teacher can both review the transcript and feedback given to the student. The student accesses this from the item's review section on the finished page:

The teacher can see a similar view, by clicking "view" beside the attempt on the grade.

In the teachers case they will also see a "grade explanation" section that explains how the grade was calculated.
This is different to the students feedback, though the content may be similar.