Before assigning a tutor to students, test how it responds to make sure the behaviour matches your expectations. This guide covers how to test your tutor's responses, adjust settings, and verify changes.
Starting a test conversation
1. Open your tutor from the Tutors page
2. The tutor opens in the Chat tab. If you have previous conversations, they appear in the sidebar on the left.
3. Click New chat to start a fresh test conversation
4. Type a question in the text box and press Enter to send it. The tutor will respond based on its current settings.
Adjusting tutor settings
If the tutor's responses are not what you expected, click the Settings tab to adjust its configuration.
Key settings you can adjust:
Prompt - The instructions that define how the tutor behaves and responds
Knowledge base - Upload documents to add custom knowledge to your tutor
Socratic mode - Controls how the tutor guides students (Off, Guided, Adaptive, or Socratic)
Follow-ups - Whether the tutor suggests follow-up questions after responding
Scroll down to find more settings including STEM mode (for maths and science visualisations) and Image generation.
After making changes, click Save Changes, then switch back to the Chat tab.
Always start a new chat after changes
After changing the tutor's settings, always click New chat to start a fresh conversation. This ensures you see the effect of your changes immediately. Previous chats retain the old settings context.
Managing test conversations
Your test conversations are organized into threads in the sidebar. Each time you click New Chat, a new thread is created so you can test different scenarios independently.
Previous threads remain accessible in the sidebar so you can compare how the tutor responded before and after changes. You can rename or delete threads using the three-dot menu next to each chat.
What to test
Try testing each feature you have enabled:
Socratic mode - Ask a question and check whether the tutor guides the student rather than giving the answer directly
Knowledge base - Ask about content from your uploaded documents
STEM mode - Ask for a calculation or graph to verify maths rendering works
Image generation - Request an image to check the tutor can generate visuals
File uploads - Upload an image or document to verify the tutor interprets it correctly