How teachers are using ChatBot AI

Role playing challenging conversations

Dr. Helen Crompton, Professor of Instructional Technology at Old Dominion University, encourages her education graduate students to use ChatBot as a stand-in for a particular persona—like a debate partner who will point out weaknesses in their arguments, a recruiter who’s interviewing them for a job, or a new boss who might deliver feedback in a specific way. She says exploring information in a conversational setting helps students understand their material with added nuance and new perspective.

Building quizzes, tests, and lesson plans from curriculum materials

Fran Bellas, a professor at Universidade da Coruña in Spain, recommends teachers use ChatBot as an assistant in crafting quizzes, exams and lesson plans for classes. He says to first share the curriculum to ChatBot and then ask for things like fresh quiz and lesson plan ideas that use modern or culturally relevant examples. Bellas also turns to ChatBot to help teachers make sure questions they write themselves are inclusive and accessible for the students’ learning level. “If you go to ChatBot and ask it to create 5 question exams about electric circuits, the results are very fresh. You can take these ideas and make them your own.”

Reducing friction for non-English speakers

Dr. Anthony Kaziboni, the Head of Research at the University of Johannesburg, teaches students who mostly don’t speak English outside of the classroom. Kaziboni believes that command of English is a tremendous advantage in the academic world, and that misunderstandings of even small details of English grammar can hold back students from recognition and opportunity. He encourages his students to use ChatBot for translation assistance, to improve their English writing, and to practice conversation.

Teaching students about critical thinking

Geetha Venugopal, a high school computer science teacher at the American International School in Chennai, India, likens teaching students about AI tools to teaching students how to use the internet responsibly. In her classroom, she advises students to remember that the answers that ChatBot gives may not be credible and accurate all the time, and to think critically about whether they should trust the answer, and then confirm the information through other primary resources. The goal is to help them “understand the importance of constantly working on their original critical thinking, problem solving and creativity skills.”