How Muzzy Lane and CSU Global built a crisis intervention roleplay assessment with Amazon Bedrock

In a world where AI can perform routine tasks, educators are rethinking how they assess authentic learning. Higher education teams are under pressure to design assessments that measure and validate how learners apply their knowledge in real-world contexts. The real opportunity here is to provide learning experiences that feel authentic, provide room for safe practice, and allow learners to make mistakes without real-world consequences as they build their skills.

Colorado State University Global (CSU Global), a 100% online, accredited nonprofit university, set out to take on this opportunity by collaborating with Muzzy Lane, an educational technology company that supports instructional designers to design and deliver roleplay assessments directly in their learning management system (LMS). Muzzy Lane’s Author platform is powered by Amazon Bedrock, which supports its AI capabilities and protects customer data. By using Author, CSU Global designed its high-stakes roleplay assessments for its Bachelor of Science (BS) in Human Services program.

Why CSU Global wanted a more authentic assessment experience

CSU Global wanted to strengthen learning outcomes in its BS in Human Services program by giving students a safe space to apply what they’ve learned in coursework to real-world situations. The university needed an environment where students could practice handling sensitive scenarios, make mistakes without real-world consequences, and receive immediate feedback on their responses.

To support that goal, CSU Global’s Instructional Design team set out to create an assessment simulation in which students take on the role of crisis interventionists offering services in response to a hypothetical campus tragedy.

How Muzzy Lane Author and Amazon Bedrock supported the build

CSU Global partnered with Muzzy Lane to design and deploy their crisis intervention roleplay assessment in their LMS using Author. Amazon Bedrock supports Author’s AI capabilities for content generation through the Production Assistant and the Generate Playbook, which teams can use to build assessments in a structured backward-design process directly from course materials. The Production Assistant is Muzzy Lane’s AI Production Tool, and the Generate Playbook is the set of steps that guide instructors through the backward-design process to create the assessment.

Using the Generate Playbook prompts within the platform, CSU Global efficiently created key assessment elements: an emotionally complex scenario, virtual characters that witnessed the tragic event, multiple-choice questions, and open-response prompts. The result is a more streamlined content development process and a branching simulation for learners to step into the role of a crisis interventionalist, supporting experiential learning, authentic skill application, and career preparation.

What students and faculty saw in the assessment launch

Thanks to Muzzy Lane Author and Amazon Bedrock, feedback from CSU Global’s assessment launch has been positive. Students shared that the experience helped them explore different approaches to crisis intervention and guided their thinking through complex decisions. One human services student said, “School shootings are not an easy topic to approach in any aspect. This training was a good example of building the foundational skills to approach sensitive topics and expand critical thinking,” underscoring the assessment’s impact.

Nicol Dunn, instructional design technology specialist at CSU Global, also highlighted the value of the platform in the development process: “Muzzy Lane’s AI tools are a game changer. With the use of a solid prompt and concept, the tools create an engaging interactive simulation in minutes with the ability to fine-tune and edit as needed.” Dunn added, “I was able to create engaging simulations that allow learners to practice their skills in a real-world scenario without spending countless hours developing the content from scratch…This collaboration shows CSU Global’s commitment to partnering with innovative technologies that continuously enhance our curriculum and streamline workflows for our team.”

How the architecture supports privacy and control

Muzzy Lane’s Author platform is hosted directly on Amazon Web Services (AWS), taking advantage of its secure, scalable cloud infrastructure to deliver reliable performance. Within this architecture, Amazon Bedrock serves as the primary managed service for orchestrating the Production Assistant’s AI functionality, including content generation, iterative refinement, and AI-assisted authoring workflows. By using Bedrock as the central layer, Muzzy Lane can route requests to foundation models (FMs) and maintain tight control over how data is handled and stored.

Author’s AI features, including all content creation from the Production Assistant prompts and open response answers from learners, are processed through Amazon Bedrock to preserve privacy and meet institutional expectations for data governance. In Amazon Bedrock, customer data, including chats with the Production Assistant, isn’t used to train underlying FMs, keeping their data safe and private. This means that customer content remains logistically isolated and institutions can retain full control over their content and learner data.

Through this architecture, institutions like CSU Global can adopt AI capabilities with Author and keep their data protected within AWS services. Instructional designers use Muzzy Lane’s Production Assistant to create student-playable roleplay assessments using an iterative process. The user is guided through a series of steps that combine predetermined best practices and dynamically generated content from Amazon Bedrock AI models. Additionally, student-facing activities can include open-response questions that process free-form student text input and provide feedback from Muzzy Lane’s platform using AI-models in Amazon Bedrock as consultants. The assessments are delivered directly to students through their LMS using the 1EdTech LTI 1.3 protocol.

The following diagram shows the solution architecture.

Figure 1: Architecture diagram

Why the AWS partnership matters for Muzzy Lane

Muzzy Lane emphasizes the significance that Amazon Bedrock has made to its Author platform. Muzzy Lane’s Vice President of Production Jeff Fiske states that “Amazon Bedrock is one of the best ways to secure and host services” and that “we have access to a wide variety of different AI models with different price advantages, with the flexibility to move through different models that work best for our platform.” Muzzy Lane prioritizes the security of its customers’ and students’ data and safeguards all AI interactions. Their partnership with AWS to integrate Bedrock into Author’s architectural framework enhances the platform’s security measures, making it a trusted platform for CSU Global and other universities.

Conclusion

Amazon Bedrock is an essential service that powers Muzzy Lane’s Author platform. Bedrock is the foundation of Author’s AI capabilities, including content generation using the Production Assistant and Generate Playbook prompts. It also safeguards their customers’ data, so institutions have full control over their prompts, assessment content, and data. Finally, learners’ open-response answers in assessments are fully processed through the service, keeping their responses private and accessible only by instructors.

The combination of Muzzy Lane Author and Amazon Bedrock delivered a solution to CSU Global’s need for a high-stakes crisis intervention assessment that could be delivered directly and securely to their LMS platform. To learn more, schedule an Author demo or visit the Muzzy Lane Blog. To learn more about how AWS helps public sector organizations deploy AI-driven solutions, connect with the AWS Public Sector Team today.