Jen Farrow
Accessibility checker
Make your materials clearer, more accessible and easier for students to follow.
Val Persona – Accessibility Checker (Version 1)
How to create a custom AI persona and train it with a dedicated knowledge base to provide specialised feedback
A persona is a customisable AI chatbot that can be trained on specific information to provide specialised responses. This is useful for creating expert assistants for niche tasks, such as checking learning materials against accessibility guidelines and cognitive load principles. This process allows educators to build a reusable tool that provides fast, practical feedback tailored to their specific context, saving time and improving the quality of their content.
00:22Plan your persona's purpose and knowledge base. In a separate document, outline the persona's goal, its intended audience, and the style of feedback it should provide. Gather relevant web links and documents (e.g., PDFs) that will form its expertise.01:18Use the AI to draft a system prompt. In a standard chat, paste your plan and ask the AI to structure it into a concise system prompt. For example:Can you create a prompt for Val that incorporates this data into a concise system prompt?01:10Create a new persona. Navigate to the Personas section and click the Create Persona button.01:12Configure the persona's details. Give your persona a name and a short description. Copy the system prompt generated in the previous step and paste it into the System Prompt field.04:25Create a knowledge collection. Navigate to the Knowledge tab and click Create Knowledge. Give the collection a name, then upload the files and add the web links you gathered in the planning stage.03:31Attach the knowledge collection to your persona. Return to the persona editing screen. Scroll down to the Knowledge section, click Select Knowledge, and choose the collection you just created.04:58Save and use the persona. Save your persona. To use it, start a new chat and select your custom persona from the dropdown menu to begin interacting with it.
Tool | The tool used is Val, RMIT's generative AI assistant. |
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Key Concept | A persona is a custom AI assistant with a specific purpose, while a knowledge base is a collection of documents and links used to train it. |
Example Prompt | To refine the initial plan, the presenter used the prompt: "Can you create a prompt for Val that incorporates this data into a concise system prompt?" |
Related skills
- Customise and train AI tools — This activity is a direct example of customising an AI by creating a new persona and training it with a specific knowledge base.
- Apply discipline-specific context — The process involves shaping the AI's output to align with the specific context of accessibility and cognitive load theory for educational content.
- Refine and iterate prompts — The workflow includes a meta-step of using the AI itself to refine a basic plan into a structured and more effective system prompt for the new persona.
- Explore AI tool features — This guide moves beyond basic chat to demonstrate advanced features like creating and managing custom personas and knowledge collections.