Using Blackboard AI conversation tool for Environmental Health

By: Dr Aaron Lawson

Using Blackboard AI during a Socratic questioning roleplay scenario in an Environmental Health context.

Effective communication is often recognised as being one of the sought-after core graduate skills by employers. However, feedback and wider research would suggest that it is also one of the things that many students and graduates struggle with the most.

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Students practising role-plays (Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash)

Often, educators struggle to replicate real-world conversations in the classroom due to the challenges of finding appropriate stakeholders and managing simultaneous role-plays with a large cohort. However, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has recently emerged as being a potential pedagogic tool for helping develop effective communication skills amongst students in Higher Education (Derakhshan & Khazaie, 2025). AI chatbots in particular are designed to replicate real-world personas so that a user (person) can interact with it akin to a real conversation.

Socratic questioning role-play scenarios are known to be highly beneficial in developing effective communication skills amongst students (Dalim et al., 2022). Recently, Blackboard Ultra has introduced their Blackboard AI conversation tool, which can replicate Socratic (conversational) questioning in a role-play-type scenario.

Designing the role-play

In March 2025, the author developed a Socratic questioning role-play scenario using the Blackboard AI conversation tool, for ENH322, a second-year undergraduate health communication module. Students were given the role of the Local Authority Environmental Health Officer, visiting a local fish and chip shop takeaway as part of a childhood obesity initiative.

The following role play scenario was developed and used to ‘seed’ the AI conversation tool:

Twenty second-year undergraduate Environmental Health students were provided with an in-class briefing, and asked to read the above description before taking part in the role-play scenario in Blackboard.

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Blackboard AI conversation tool: Mary the fish and chip shop owner

Student Feedback

Following the completion of the activity, students were asked to complete a short, voluntary evaluation survey. Feedback revealed that student attitudes towards the Blackboard role-play scenario were overwhelmingly positive.  Most students felt that the AI persona (Mary the Fish & Chip Shop Owner) was understandable and clear. They also reported that the AI persona responses were fast and mostly realistic:

“she talked like a real person”

“very human-like, understanding”

“she was challenging every word you said so you had to make sure of what you were saying”

“the way it asks follow-up questions and can argue back. It felt like what someone would actually say”

“I thought the human aspect of the AI responses were quite encouraging. Her suggestion of new ideas or how to incorporate my ideas helped to form a conclusion

Most students felt that using Blackboard AI to engage in the role-play was of ‘high value’ to their learning experience and in developing practical experience in effective communication, that it was ‘very easy’ and ‘very precise’ to use when doing so. All students reported ‘enjoying’ the activity.

However, a number of limitations of the AI persona were reported. Some students found that the persona's range of emotions and responses were limited and that after a time, it became quite repetitive:

“Possibly too much cooperation. Get a more difficult persona”

“didn’t show full range of emotions. I tried provoking the AI persona, when a human would perhaps lose their temper, the persona was too calm. This makes it a little less realistic”

“towards the end of the conversation she began to repeat herself a lot and it not demonstrate a normal conversation where there was a clear ending”

“occasionally she repeated long phrases over a gain a few times following something I said or suggested. This was less human-like”

Inaccuracies were also noted in relation to the case study context (e.g. the AI persona referenced incorrect legislation not relevant to Northern Ireland). Some students felt that this type of AI-assisted Socratic questioning role-play was not useful for developing or testing all communication methods (e.g. the ability to read body language, tone and intonation).

Conclusion

Overall, the use of the Blackboard AI conversation tool was considered to be beneficial for the students. The Socratic questioning role-play scenarios facilitated students' development of communication skills, as well as testing student’s critical knowledge in applied contexts. The use of Blackboard AI can also help overcome more traditional challenges experienced by Educators when delivering such activities, including the ability to easily facilitate and manage large student cohorts without restraints on timing whilst still providing an individual learning experience.

• This is a summary of the Evaluating the undergraduate student experience of using Blackboard AI during a Socratic questioning role-play scenario in an Environmental Health context article, a full account of this research can be found in Learning Matters*

• Dr Aaron Lawson is a lecturer in Environmental Health

Further reading

• Learning Matters: Evaluating the undergraduate student experience of using Blackboard AI during a Socratic questioning roleplay scenario in an Environmental Health context*

• Blackboard AI conversation tool

• UU AI Communities of Practice

• AI Case Studies

• Dalim, S.F., Ishak, A.S. and Hamzah, L.M., 2022. Promoting students’ critical thinking through Socratic method: The views and challenges. Asian Journal of University Education, 18(4), pp.1034-1047.

• Derakhshan, A., Teo, T. and Khazaie, S., 2025. Investigating the usefulness of artificial intelligence-driven robots in developing empathy for English for medical purposes communication: The role-play of Asian and African students. Computers in Human Behavior, 162, p.108416.