Figures from live use, and from an anonymous survey of the students who were assessed on it.
Now used by universities across the UK and Ireland, and by schools, not-for-profit organisations and emergency-service training teams.
Survey: anonymous, 69 responses (49% of the cohort), collected before students received their results.
“My social work students loved the realistic feel of it. We had students discussing fictional cases with a virtual practice teacher. Students found the agent intuitive, informative and engaging. It provides a safe, supportive environment where they can practice, make mistakes and build confidence before going out on placement. I can see considerable potential for other applications. We are developing a student support agent to guide students through their assignments.”
“Around 100 of our second-year pharmacy students used HiEd to practice counselling patients. I built the patient myself from the pharmacy template: Alice, a reserved woman asking to buy codeine-based painkillers over the counter, so students had to draw out the right information and advise her safely. In one class session we had 14 conversations running at once, and students kept going that evening on their own. At the end, Alice steps out of character and gives feedback, according to how I had prompted it. I could listen to all the conversations in the platform and adjust the agent to behave in different ways. It's simple, and great fun for the students. We just used it as a seminar exercise but I can see how this will become a bigger part of teaching and how conversations could be used as evidence of learning.”
“We've been using this as an official summative assessment on one of our final year modules. It's been absolutely brilliant. Students who are going to be great social workers are not always great at writing essays, and this was a great way to let them shine: talking through what they know, instead of writing about it. We set up AI agents that grilled them on their knowledge. Sounds severe, but they were allowed 3 attempts, then they nominated the conversation they wanted us to mark. I enjoyed marking the conversations and I can't say I have enjoyed marking more than a couple of essays in recent years due to students' use of AI.”
AI in Education Awards 2026, presented at the 6th National Conference on Generative AI in Education, Belfast