Bots++ is an optional feature in Ed Discussion. Enabling it offers an AI-powered chatbot that can respond to queries. The bot can:

• Refer to text-based course materials that you upload
• Follow your instructions on how best to respond using a core prompt that you provide
• Hide its responses to students in order for you or other teaching staff to verify its accuracy first

This guide will walk you through the steps to set up Bots++ in Ed Discussion and customize its functionality.

Enabling Bots++

Complete these steps in order to Enable Bots++ in Ed Discussion. This article assumes you already have an Ed Discussion instance associated with your Canvas course. If you do not, see “Enable Ed Discussion in Canvas” in the Ed Discussion Quick Start Guide. Then return to these instructions once you have Ed Discussion added to your Canvas course.

1. Select the Gear Icon to access your Ed Discussion course's settings.
    
2. Under General > Additional Features, select the checkbox next to Bots++.
   
3. The "Bots++" option will appear in the left navigation bar - select it.
4. Hover your mouse over the LLM Provider “UChicago GPT4.1 for Ed Bot” and select Set This Provider.
   

Bots++ Settings

When adjusting the Bots++ settings, you may encounter an Unsaved Changes notification. Select Save to store your changes or Reset to start over.

Basics

1. To change the settings for your bot, access its settings by selecting the Gear Icon in the primary navigation bar.
2. Then, select the Bots++ option in the secondary menu.
3. Under Appearance, you can upload an avatar to visually represent the bot.
4. Under Disclaimer, you can add a note that students will see near any responses the Bot provides, reminding them that responses are AI-generated and to think critically about the answers.
5. LLM providers are where you select the LLM that you want Bots++ to use. There is only one provider at the moment.

Responses

6. In the Bot responds to section, you can select who the bot responds to: Nobody, students, or students and staff. 
7. In the Respond to public questions, and… drop-down, you can select what types of queries the bot responds to: Posts, Megathreads, Private questions, and/or Direct replies to the bot.
8. Bot responds with is where you select how the bot responds: With an Answer or Comment. The difference between an answer and a comment is whether you want it to provide guiding help as a comment or a direct answer. Under Comment, you can select the Post as Staff Only option. The bot’s response will be hidden until you or your teaching staff edit the reply and uncheck the Visible to staff only toggle in the editor view.

Customization

9. Under Resources, you can upload text-based files for the bot to use as additional context to help it shape its responses. To upload files, select the Upload File button and select one or more files to upload.
10. If you’d like to import files from another Ed course, click the horizontal ellipsis and select Import Embeddings, then select the appropriate course.
11. In the text area under About the course, enter text to help give the Bot as much context as possible to help direct its answers. You may enter the course description, course objectives, and other information about the course and what students should be able to know or do at the end of it.

Advanced

12. If you wish, you can edit the Core prompt. You do not need to edit this if you want to keep the default prompt.
13. You can have the bot ignore specific categories by adding them to this text entry field.
14. Enable Per student cap to set limits on the number of interactions each student can have with the bot.
15. Please leave Anonymize users enabled.
16. You can import settings from another course

Test the Bot 

After you’ve set up the bot, you can test how it responds to queries. 

1. Navigate to the Discussion view and Create a New Thread with your query.
2. Depending on the settings, the bot may not be triggered to respond. For example, if the Bot is set to respond to only public questions, it will not be triggered to respond to a comment. If you need to trigger a response to a query, select the horizontal ellipsis and select Trigger LLM Bot.
3. For additional insight into how the bot responds, you can also view the LLM Context, which includes information about the prompt and resources that the bot uses to formulate its response, formatted in a JSON file format. To view, select the horizontal ellipsis under the query and select View LLM Context.
4. You can regenerate a bot’s response by clicking the horizontal ellipsis, then selecting Regenerate.

Further Resources

For more help with Ed Discussion, please email vendor support at support@edstem.org or canvas@uchicago.edu.