Taleni — AI course tutor for BUSI 2000U Collaborative Leadership, created by Prof. Kotlyar
Taleni is an AI-powered course assistant provided by Prof. Igor Kotlyar for BUSI 2000U Collaborative Leadership. It answers questions using the course outline, lecture slides, and Canvas pages for this course. It is a computer program, not Prof. Kotlyar. Because its answers are generated using artificial intelligence, they may occasionally be inaccurate or incomplete. The course outline and Canvas are the official word: if an answer here differs from them, the outline and Canvas take precedence.
The assistant is not a messaging channel to Prof. Kotlyar. Nothing you type here is delivered to him, with two exceptions described below: the automated safety alert, and a tip you explicitly choose to share. No one watches conversations as they happen. Telling the assistant something is not the same as telling your professor. For anything personal — absences, accommodations, extensions, grades — message Prof. Kotlyar on Canvas.
One automated safety exception: if a message appears to indicate a risk of harm to yourself or others, the system automatically sends Prof. Kotlyar an alert that includes the text of that message, the assistant's reply, and what the automated screening flagged, so he can respond — for example by sharing supports. This is automated screening, not live monitoring: no person is watching, a response is not immediate, and this is not an emergency service — if you or someone else is in immediate danger, call 911. The alert does not include your name, because the system does not know it; anything you typed in the message itself is included.
Some stored conversations are read later: Prof. Kotlyar may review interactions — questions and the assistant's answers — to improve the assistant and the course materials, and to check that the tool is being used appropriately. Not every conversation is reviewed. Taleni never asks who you are and does not attach your name, student number, or email address as identity fields to anything it stores. Stored conversations do contain non-identifying browser and conversation identifiers used to operate the service, as described below.
You do not sign in or enter your name to use the assistant. Taleni does not ask for your name, student number, or email address, and the application does not store them as identity fields. Anything you choose to type into a conversation may be stored as part of that conversation's text — see the note below about what not to type. Taleni does not store your IP address in its application database. Replit, which hosts Taleni, states that it collects IP addresses and other technical usage data, including through system-generated logs, as part of operating its services. That information is handled under Replit's privacy policy.
What is stored: the text of questions and answers, any rating you give, and any written feedback you choose to add when rating an answer. Prof. Kotlyar may review some of these stored records, as described above, to improve the assistant and the course materials and to check for improper use. Questions the assistant declines and redirects to the instructor (for example, about accommodations) are counted, but their text is not saved in Taleni's application records. Like every question sent through the chat, they are checked by an automated safety screening step before the assistant decides how to respond. Messages flagged by the automated safety screening are stored with their text (see the safety exception above). Non-identifying identifiers saved in your browser apply fair-use limits and group your questions into conversations in the tool's records. They do not contain your name, student number, or email address. If you submit a tip, one of them also holds that tip's contribution code for the rest of that conversation, so that you can withdraw it.
Please do not type your name, student number, or other personal or sensitive information into your questions, written feedback, or tips. Questions Taleni stores, written feedback on an answer, and tip text all become part of the stored record.
Taleni does not attach a student identity to stored conversations and has no student-identity-based lookup for them. Prof. Kotlyar therefore cannot reliably locate a particular student's stored conversations from that student's identity alone, and Taleni does not offer deletion of a specific person's conversations on request.
Taleni may occasionally invite you to leave a short tip for students in this course — for example, after you have worked through a difficult concept or distinction. This is entirely voluntary, and Taleni will only use something you explicitly choose to share. Nothing from an ordinary conversation is shown to students as a peer tip unless you explicitly choose to share it.
If you choose to leave a tip:
Prof. Kotlyar reads every tip and decides whether to approve it, edit it, or reject it. A tip is not served to students through the peer-tip feature unless he approves it, and he can remove an approved tip at any time.
The stored tip record does not include separate fields for your name, student number, device identifier, session identifier, or conversation identifier. Anything you choose to type into the tip is stored as part of the tip text, so do not include identifying information. During the conversation in which you submit a tip, Taleni keeps the tip's contribution code in your browser so you can withdraw it. The code itself is also stored with the tip, so Prof. Kotlyar can find the tip if you send him the code.
An approved tip may be shown to students in BUSI 2000U, identified as a tip contributed by a student in the course.
A tip that is not approved is kept for review and audit purposes but is not shown to students.
Tips are not used to train the AI model.
If you change your mind: You can withdraw a tip during the same conversation in which you submitted it. Taleni will also give you a contribution code when you submit a tip — keep it if you may want to withdraw the tip later. After the conversation ends, you can send that code to Prof. Kotlyar through Canvas and ask to have the tip withdrawn. Because Taleni does not attach a separate student identifier to the stored tip record, that code is how Prof. Kotlyar can tell which tip you submitted.
Withdrawing a tip stops it from being shown in the future. It cannot undo a tip that was already shown to a student.
The text of your conversation is processed through OpenAI's API so the assistant can generate answers. Your conversations are not used to train an AI model: OpenAI does not use inputs or outputs submitted through its API to train or improve its models by default, and this assistant does not opt in to sharing conversations with OpenAI for model training. OpenAI may retain API inputs and outputs for a limited period, generally up to 30 days under its standard API data-retention practices, for purposes such as detecting abuse and maintaining the security of its services.
Conversation data is not sold, and is not provided to advertisers or shared with third parties for advertising, marketing, or unrelated commercial purposes. Information is processed by the service providers necessary to operate the assistant: OpenAI, which processes conversation text to generate answers; Replit, which hosts the assistant and its database; and Resend, which delivers the tool's alert and summary emails to the instructor.
The assistant is provided by your instructor, Prof. Kotlyar, and its use is approved by him under Section 16 of the course outline, which permits AI use with the instructor's specific written approval. This is instructor approval for this course only — not a university approval. Using it does not need to be declared on the Individual Project Statement. It will not help with assigned work — quizzes, the Term Test, or the Term Project. When it declines, that is course policy working as intended, not a malfunction. Using the assistant is optional, is not tracked per student, and has no effect on your grade.
Using the assistant does not, by itself, constitute consent for your conversations to be used for research. If assistant data were ever proposed for use in a research study, applicable research ethics, information, and consent requirements would be addressed separately. Participation for educational purposes does not automatically constitute participation in research.
The assistant is provided by Prof. Kotlyar personally for this course and runs on Skill Simulator infrastructure independently developed and managed by Dr. Igor Kotlyar. It is not an Ontario Tech University system: the university does not provide, develop, manage, review, or approve it.
Questions about the course go to Prof. Kotlyar on Canvas. Questions or concerns about how information is collected, used, retained, or shared may be directed to Dr. Igor Kotlyar, privacy@skillsimulator.com.