This article will review updates made specifically to Engageli's Studio product.
Enhancements
Practice Pal
A new activity called Practice Pal has been added to Studio.
Practice Pal is an AI-powered interactive assistant that evaluates learners' understanding of source content through dynamic questioning. It also provides explanations to clarify concepts when confusion arises--creating an experience similar to working with a teaching assistant in a two-way, chat-based conversational format. Once the conversation is over, the learner is given a score and feedback. Practice Pal provides opportunities to assess knowledge gaps and deliver targeted explanations and clarifications.
Practice Pal can help personalize learning and improve student engagement and outcomes. Practice Pal caters to neurodiverse styles, providing specific instruction and feedback, and are available 24/7, making learning more flexible. Practice Pal is intended to reduce the workload on human educators, allowing educators to focus on higher order teaching, providing significant ROI to institutions and opportunities to scale rigor learning.
A brief walkthrough of this new activity is provided, highlighting its pedagogical features.
Below is a screenshot of the new Practice Pal option when adding an activity to your module:
Upon selecting to add the Practice Pal activity, you’ll be prompted to make a few selections. Below is a screenshot of the Practice Pal creation screen:
Below is a description of the selection fields that appear:
- Select Character - Select an avatar that will represent Practice Pal during the activity. Learners will see this avatar as they chat with the assistant.
- Sources - From this dropdown, select all the source material from which Practice Pal will use when engaging with the learner. Acceptable source activities currently include base video segments, PDF files, and PPTX files.
- Passing Score - Indicate a score the learner must achieve in order to be marked as having "Passed" this activity. This value can range from 1 to 100. The score is an evaluation of how well Practice Pal believes the learner understands the source content, so it will be subjective. You may click on the field's corresponding "info" icon to read more details about how the learner's score is calculated.
- Generate - Click here to add the activity to the module. The newly-added activity will show a "Processing" indicator for several minutes, as the AI engine generates the content. Once the indicator goes away, the activity is ready.
Once a Practice Pal activity is processed, you can click the "edit" icon associated with it to review the AI-generated content and make any necessary modifications. Below is a sample screenshot of the "edit" window:
The Engageli AI engine will automatically create a persona for the assistant, as well as topics that the learner will be tested on.
You can click on a topic to view its details and to make any necessary adjustments. Below is a screenshot of the topic details page:
The “Main Idea” field is used to provide guidance to Practice Pal on the topic it will be covering, as well as any additional instructions it should consider, such as tone, consideration for how to score the learner, etc. If you plan to add your own topic, reviewing the contents of an auto-generated one will give you a good idea of the type of information to put here for Practice Pal.
The “Questions” fields are specific questions that Practice Pal will ask the learner during the activity. Engageli Studio provides opportunities to fine tune Practice Pal with the ability to delete existing questions or add new ones.
Once the module is published and available in the Playback Room, here is what what the Practice Pal activity looks like from the learner’s perspective:
The interaction goes beyond a simple one-way exchange. Practice Pal is designed to actively challenge the learner’s understanding of the topic, while offering targeted guidance in areas where knowledge gaps emerge.
Once the Practice Pal activity is complete, the learner will be given a score and feedback about their performance, as shown below:
As the Instructor, you can review the learner’s score, feedback, and chat conversation from the module’s Analytics area, as shown below:
Other Enhancements
- Learning Pal improvements
- History per user, per module, and per session are now available.
- Added additional error handling process in the event that Learning Pal does not have enough information to answer the question.
- Improved the behavior of the markers on the timeline within Studio.
- Users can now move markers via the left and right keyboard keys.
- The audio graph is displayed when changing marker position.
- Changing the position of markers has been visually improved.
- Subtitles will be generated and available to learners as they watch the module’s video segments.
- A new setting has been added which allows Quick Poll descriptions to be generated by AI.
Fixes
- Added Learning Pal UI fixes and stability improvements.
- Fixed an issue preventing users from adding an Engageli doc from Content into a module.
- Fixed an issue that caused Engageli Docs to be cleared for Instructors in Preview Mode when switching between activities.
- Fixed issue preventing users from adding activities on the timeline.
- Opening a “video part” activity from learning pal now allows video to play from the time specified.
- Publishing a module in the class portal with an expired due date is now disabled.
- A11y compatibility has been added to the left pane of the studio viewer.
- Added feedback button for Practice Pal activity.