Explain Your Thinking

Ask students short, AI-guided questions about an online-text assignment submission and provide an advisory assessment of how well they can explain their reasoning.

Requirements

• Moodle 4.5 or later.
• The standard Online text assignment submission type.
• Ned AI 0.4.1 or later, enabled with a valid Ned Hub licence and sufficient credits.

Install and configure

1. Install the plugin at mod/assign/submission/nedthinking and complete the Moodle upgrade.
2. Configure and enable Ned AI.
3. Edit an assignment and enable both Online text and Explain Your Thinking.
4. Choose one to three questions, provide optional AI guidance, decide whether the interview is required, and choose whether students may see the assessment.

Student experience

1. The student submits online text through the assignment.
2. The plugin asks brief questions grounded in that submission.
3. The interview can be resumed if interrupted.
4. After completion, the plugin records a High, Medium, or Low advisory reasoning assessment with a short explanation.

Teacher review

Teachers can review the stored transcript and assessment report. They can restart an interview when a student needs another attempt. Use the transcript as supporting evidence rather than as an automatic grading decision.

Current scope

• English-language, individual online-text submissions.
• Text chat only.
• One to three configured questions.
• Separate interview completion state so the original Moodle submission is not altered.

Privacy and AI processing

The student's submitted online text, configured teacher guidance, and interview messages are processed through Ned AI to generate questions and the advisory assessment. The plugin stores the transcript and result in Moodle. Provider credentials remain in Ned AI and are not stored by this plugin.

Troubleshooting

• Confirm Online text and Explain Your Thinking are both enabled for the assignment.
• Confirm Ned AI is installed, enabled, licensed, and has sufficient credits.
• If an interview was interrupted, reopen it to continue from the stored state.
• If question generation fails, review the Ned AI connection and Moodle task/error logs.

Change history

1. 2 Sep 2026209b1c5Increased the output budget for follow-up questions.
2. 2 Sep 202622b1e2eIncreased reasoning-model output budgets.
3. 2 Sep 2026def0c78Corrected Moodle core text namespace compatibility.
4. 2 Sep 20261e7f634Built the first Explain Your Thinking MVP.