We try to keep it faff and fuss free: Log-in. Brief your AI agent and upload relevant training material. Share a link with your students/trainees. Review the recordings.
Watch how the platform works for lecturers and students
Social work students need extensive practice in the conversations that define the profession: safeguarding assessments, working with reluctant clients, delivering difficult news, and navigating multi-agency dynamics. But access to realistic practice is limited by placement hours, peer availability, and the constraints of classroom role-play.
With this platform, lecturers can create realistic AI clients that respond dynamically to student approach: cooperative when rapport is built, defensive when pushed too hard, withdrawn when overwhelmed. Students can practice the same scenario repeatedly, building confidence before they face real clients on placement.
Social work is a conversation-based profession. Written assignments can test knowledge of legislation and theory, but they cannot assess whether a student can actually build rapport with a hostile parent, sensitively explore safeguarding concerns, or de-escalate a crisis. Voice-based AI simulations bridge this gap.
Lecturers can build agents in minutes using the guided social work template, selecting scenario types, client engagement levels, risk factors, and competencies aligned to the Professional Capabilities Framework (PCF). The AI client adapts its behaviour based on how the student approaches the conversation: empathic, patient questioning opens the client up; rushed, formulaic approaches cause them to shut down.
Students receive full transcripts and audio recordings to review. Lecturers can listen back and provide targeted feedback on specific moments in the conversation. The platform can also be used for assessed practice: students complete a conversation and submit the recording for marking.
Scenarios can be mapped to the Professional Capabilities Framework (PCF), Social Work England professional standards, and Knowledge and Skills Statements (KSS) for child and family or adult social work. Lecturers can select specific competencies (safeguarding risk identification, anti-oppressive practice, strengths-based approaches, use of professional authority) and the AI will create opportunities for students to demonstrate them.
Some conversations in social work carry enormous weight: disclosing abuse, assessing suicide risk, removing a child. These cannot be practiced once in a classroom and then attempted for real on placement. Students can repeat these scenarios until they feel confident, making mistakes safely, reviewing their approach, and building the emotional resilience needed for practice.
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.”
“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
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Professionals don't write essays in practice. They have difficult conversations. Natural voice interactions mirror real professional demands.
Students can practice anytime, with no scheduling and no waiting. Human role-players are expensive. AI allows unlimited practice.
Make mistakes without real-world consequences. Repeat scenarios until confident, then review transcripts and recordings.
Create custom AI conversation agents that simulate realistic professional scenarios. Students practice challenging conversations as many times as they need.
Get your first AI agent running in minutes
Set up a class for your course. Give it a name and description.
Define the scenario: who they are, what the context is, how they should respond.
Send your students a simple enrollment link. They log in and start practicing.
Access transcripts and recordings. Provide feedback on specific moments.
Create scenarios tailored to your curriculum
Build rapport, gather information, and assess need with a new client.
AssessmentNavigate a sensitive conversation with a parent about concerns for a child.
SafeguardingSupport behaviour change using MI techniques with a reluctant client.
MIAssess risk and explore options with a person in mental health crisis.
Mental HealthExplore concerns about abuse, neglect, or exploitation with a vulnerable adult.
SafeguardingPresent your assessment and defend your professional judgement to other agencies.
ProfessionalDrop us a line. We get back within 24 hours. We set you up with a trial workspace. If you like it we help you get set up.
Or email us directly:
info@hied.aiOur AI agents use advanced voice synthesis and natural language processing to create remarkably realistic conversations. They respond contextually and adapt to student responses in real-time.
Absolutely. You define the scenario context, personality traits, and conversation goals. You can also upload relevant training materials to inform the AI's responses.
Students receive a simple enrollment link. They log in with their email, see the scenario briefing, and start the conversation with one click. No complex setup required.
Yes. Every conversation is automatically transcribed and recorded. You can read the full transcript and listen to the audio recording for each practice session.
Pricing starts at £100 for smaller numbers of students using the platform for a semester. Institution-wide access packages begin at around £10,000 per annum.
All data is stored on EU-based servers, encrypted in transit and at rest, and our infrastructure providers (Google Cloud, Vercel) are SOC 2 Type 2 certified and ISO 27001 compliant. We're GDPR compliant and your data is never used to train AI models. View our security documentation.