Authentic tasks involve "ill-structured" challenges and roles that help students rehearse for the complex ambiguities of the "game" of adult and professional life. Role play can be one way to achieve this. For example, simulated patients are widely used in medical education, and role play can be applied in business, engineering, science, psychology, politics and many other areas. We look particularly at one form of role play, where the instructor (or an invited expert, or an actor) plays the part of an ‘agent’ (for example an interviewee, patient, business owner, community representative). Students have to ask the agent appropriate questions to elicit valuable information – the agent may be unwilling or unable to give totally open, frank, accurate and complete responses. Students learn from this appropriate communication skills in a ‘safe’ environment. Such approaches are rich, valuable – and time consuming. Agentic AI gives an opportunity to scale up these approaches by configuring an agent with the appropriate ‘personality’.

This immersive workshop allows you to take the role of a student using agentic AI. You will experience the feelings of the students interacting with AI to achieve a task or goal. We will critique the approach, and we will explore how you might try this approach in your own TBL practice.