Innovation is proud to introduce its newest learning tool: structured AI chat.
We created this feature to empower students to practice conversations and engage with course material outside of class time. Although originally designed for world language learners, our AI chat works beautifully across disciplines, making it a versatile resource for content-based courses as well.
At Innovation, we believe technology should enhance learning in structured, meaningful ways. We call our applications “21st-century learning spaces“—they’re carefully designed to meet educational best practices and support student growth.
Teachers have two powerful ways to use AI chat: hosted or hostless.
The AI’s responses follow strict, teacher-defined parameters.
Hosted Chat: This mirrors Innovation’s original synchronous chat app where teachers facilitated real-time conversations between students. The key difference? Now, students can be paired with AI personas instead of classmates.
Hostless Chat: These are independent, self-paced chat assignments that students can complete on their own. But they’re not free-for-alls—the guardrails are still firmly in place:
The chat transcript is automatically recorded.
Students have a limited number of turns with the AI.
Students are always responsible to start the conversation. When the chat starts, the assignment is clear and the AI’s interaction protocols are clearly stated.
The AI persona will keep the student on track even if they attempt to distract it with irrelevant questions.
Once completed, Innovation provides an app to evaluate the quality of the student’s interactions in the chat.
This summer, I will add an AI grading assistant to help assess student work in a chat.
While this was initially envisioned for language students, its use in teaching content became clear. In this example, we set up these parameters for the AI persona:
By the way, teachers can optionally include “accessories” such as a PDF article or a video for students to review before discussion.
Here is how our chat with the Ai started for a critical discussion of the causes of the French revolution.
Our sample conversation went on like this:
Ever true to the parameters set for it, the AI persists in challenging the student to think more deeply and clearly define their points.
The AI chat feature at Innovation has great potential to enrich assignments and promote critical thinking in content courses and linguistic fluency in language classes. Try it out!