User Guide

A practical walkthrough of the Moodle AI Chat assistant for students and teachers.

1. 1. What is the course assistant?
2. 2. Opening the chatbot
3. 3. Sending a message
4. 4. Voice input
5. 5. File uploads
6. 6. Follow-up suggestions
7. 7. Giving feedback
8. 8. Exporting a conversation
9. 9. Threads
10. 10. For teachers — per-course settings
11. 11. Troubleshooting

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1. What is the course assistant?

Once installed and enabled, a floating chat button appears in the bottom-right corner of every course page and activity page. Click it to open a conversation with the AI assistant. The assistant is grounded in the content of the current course (pages, books, glossaries, forums, quizzes, wiki, assignments, lessons, labels, choices, URLs and resources) so its answers are tailored to your material.

2. Opening the chatbot

1. Log in to your Moodle instance.
2. Navigate to any page of a course where the plugin has been enabled.
3. Click the chat bubble in the bottom-right corner.
4. The first time you open the chatbot, a privacy notice is displayed. Read and accept it to continue.

3. Sending a message

• Type your question in the input box and press Enter (or click the send button).
• Responses stream in real-time — you’ll see the text appear word by word.
• Code blocks are syntax-highlighted and can be copied with a single click.
• Use Shift + Enter to insert a newline without sending.

The assistant automatically uses the current page context as part of its answer. Asking “explain this” while viewing a specific activity gives more relevant answers than asking from the course home.

4. Voice input

If your browser supports the Web Speech API (Chrome / Edge / Safari), you’ll see a microphone button next to the input. Click it, grant microphone permission once, and speak your question. The transcript appears in the input box — edit if needed and send.

5. File uploads

If your teacher has enabled uploads for the course, a paperclip button is shown. You can attach:

• Images (.png, .jpg, .webp) — the assistant can describe or reason about them.
• Documents (.pdf, .txt, .md) — text content is extracted and included in the context.

File size and count limits are enforced by the server.

6. Follow-up suggestions

After each answer the assistant may display follow-up chips: click one to send a suggested follow-up question. This is useful to explore a topic without typing.

7. Giving feedback

Each assistant reply has a 👍 / 👎 button. Your feedback helps teachers and admins improve the system. Optionally you can add a short free-text comment when you give negative feedback.

8. Exporting a conversation

If export is enabled for the course, use the Export button in the chatbot header to download the current thread:

• TXT — plain text, ideal for quick reference.
• PDF — formatted document with course and date metadata.

9. Threads

Each user has one active thread per course. Use the New thread button to archive the current conversation and start a fresh one. The assistant will no longer remember older messages, which is useful when switching topic.

10. For teachers — per-course settings

Teachers (users with the local/aichat:manage_course_settings capability) see an AI Chat settings link in the course administration block. From there you can:

• Enable/disable export.
• Enable/disable file uploads.
• Rebuild the RAG index manually after major content changes.
• Open the course dashboard with analytics (unique users, messages per day, token usage, feedback stats).
• View an anonymized log of conversations.

11. Troubleshooting

Problem	Try
Chat button not visible	Confirm the plugin is enabled site-wide and the course has local/aichat:usechatbot for your role.
“Service temporarily unavailable”	The circuit breaker has opened after repeated Azure errors — retry in a couple of minutes.
Rate-limit message	You’ve exceeded the per-user burst or daily quota. Wait and retry, or ask your admin to adjust limits.
Answers ignore my course content	Ask your teacher to trigger a Rebuild index after uploading new material.
Voice button missing	Use a Chromium-based browser or Safari; voice input relies on the browser’s Web Speech API.

For deeper issues, see the Admin Guide or contact your Moodle administrator.