Plato is a specialised, curriculum-aligned AI chatbot situated directly within the Canvas VLE.
It is designed to provide personalised, 24/7 academic support by drawing exclusively from "fenced information"—materials specifically uploaded and approved by the module instructor through the Canvas courses. This ensures that the AI's responses are accurate, trusted, and strictly aligned with the curriculum, avoiding the "hallucination" risks associated with generic AI tools.
The pilot is a response to the increasing demand for scalable, ethical GenAI support that maintains pedagogical integrity. By utilising "Pedagogical Guardrails," staff can define exactly how the AI interacts with students, ensuring it acts as a virtual tutor that scaffolds learning rather than a simple answer machine. The platform also provides staff with actionable aggregate analytics, offering insights into student engagement and identifying common learning gaps in real-time.
To read more about our findings from the first phase of the pilot—including impact metrics on student loyalty and workload reduction—please visit our detailed blog post: Plato AI Pilot at the University of Liverpool.
If you would like to discuss the use of curriculum-aligned AI in your teaching, please email cie@liverpool.ac.uk.
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