Bots++ is an optional feature in Ed Discussion. Enabling it offers an AI-powered chatbots that can respond to queries. The bots 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 > Features, select the checkbox next to Bots++.
   
3. Click AI and 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 configure your bot, access its settings by selecting the Gear icon in the primary navigation bar.

2. Then in the secondary menu, click AI and select the Bots++ option followed by the specific bot you want to configure (e.g., No name).

3. Under Appearance, you can upload an avatar and set a name to visually represent the bot.

4. Under LLM Provider, select a specific LLM for this bot or leave it set to the course default. To manage available providers, select the here link.

5. 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.

Responses

6. Under Automatically reply to, select the types of content you want the bot to respond to. You can enable any combination of: Public questions, Private questions, Posts, Megathreads, and Direct replies to the bot.

7. Under Bot responds to, select the audience the bot will reply to: Nobody, Students, or Students and staff.

8. Under Bot responds with, choose how the bot delivers its response — as an Answer or a Comment. If you select Comment, you can enable Post as Staff Only, which hides the bot's response from students until staff review and make it visible, or use it as a draft for their own reply.

9. Enable Only staff may use the trigger to restrict the ability to invoke the bot to staff members only. This can be useful if you want a member of the teaching staff to review the bot’s responses prior to making them visible to students.

Customization

10. The Customization section helps the bot better understand your course context to improve the relevance of its responses.

11. In the About the course text area, describe the course and any relevant learning objectives. This text is integrated into the bot's overall prompt to tailor its responses to your course material.

12. Under Resource access, control which uploaded resources the bot can draw from when responding. Select All resources, No resources, or Specific resources to limit access to particular files. To upload resources, select the here link.

Advanced

12. Under Core prompt, you can customize the prompt used to generate the bot's responses. Leave it blank to use the default prompt.
13. Under Ignored categories, enter any discussion categories you want the bot to ignore, separated by commas.
14. Under Throttling, enable Per student cap to limit the number of bot responses a student can receive within a given interval.
15. Under Data, keep Anonymize users enabled to prevent students' names from being sent as metadata to the LLM.
16. Under Delete, select Delete this bot to permanently remove the bot from your 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.