Workshop goal and objectives

This workshop aims to provide participants with the essential skills and knowledge needed to design, customize, and refine a chatbot. Through a guided, hands-on activity, participants will explore a chatbot design framework, customization techniques, and testing and refinement strategies.

Learning Goals

Design a Basic Chatbot: Using a design framework, participants will be able to outline a chatbot that addresses a specific user need, incorporating key elements such as conversation flow, user intents, and responses.
Customize Chatbot Interactions: Participants will demonstrate the ability to customize a chatbot's responses and interaction patterns to align with a predefined personality and user engagement goals, using at least one customization technique discussed during the workshop.
Implement Testing and Refinement Strategies: Participants will apply testing methodologies to assess chatbot functionality and user experience, and use feedback to make iterative improvements to their chatbot prototype.

Audience

This workshop is intended for staff, instructors, and students who are new to the topic of AI in education.

Time

This workshop is approximately 90 minutes in length.

Key strategies

This workshop leverages inclusive teaching strategies to create a positive learning environment to serve as a foundation for subsequent engagement with other more complex aspects of AI in education.

Consider the following strategies and perspectives when developing this workshop.

Acknowledge the wide range of emotional responses to AI. Foster trust, safety, and positive emotions first.
Address why we should care about AI and its impact on education.
Recall past personal experiences and resiliency in navigating technological innovation and disruption.

Reading list

Consider these resources as you prepare to lead this workshop.

Artificial Intelligence Teaching Guide: Web-based resources from the Stanford Teaching Commons
- Warming Up to AI
- Defining AI and Chatbots
Practical AI for Instructors and Students: Video series from the Wharton School YouTube channel.
- Part 1: Introduction to AI for Teachers and Students
- Part 2: Large Language Models (LLMs)

Slide presentation with speaker notes

Here you can find slide presentations for this workshop in different formats. The PDF version of the slides is useful for skimming and previewing the workshop. View the slide notes for additional context and sample scripts. We then recommend downloading the full PowerPoint presentation to adapt and customize. The full PowerPoint presentation includes speaker notes, sample scripts, and additional optional slides from other AI workshop kits.

SLIDES (PDF)

SLIDES & NOTES (PDF)

SLIDE PRESENTATION (PPTX)

Workshop agenda

This suggested agenda proposes a workshop that balances content presentations with learning activities. This agenda is a starting point as you adapt it to fit your audience.

Welcome/Introductions (5 minutes) [Slides]

Welcome the participants
Explain the objectives and agenda of the workshop
- Scaffolding the vocabulary and technical landscape (rule-based vs. AI-driven)
- Highlight - what the company does, where does the data come from, and what their privacy policy is.

Chatbot Design Framework (20 minutes) [Slides, Interactive Session]

Introduce a structured framework for designing chatbots, including defining objectives, understanding user needs, and mapping out conversation flows.
[Interactive Activity] Define the scope of a hypothetical chatbot.

Crafting a Meta-Prompt for Your Chatbot (25 minutes) [Slides, Interactive Session]

Testing and Refining Your Chatbot (20 minutes) [Slides, Interactive Session]

Discuss methods for testing chatbots, including setting up scenarios and collecting feedback.
Participants test each other's chatbots, applying testing methodologies learned.

Share-out and Wrap-Up (10 minutes) [Interactive Session]

Promotional resources

You can use the following sample language to promote your workshop. The image was created with assistance from DALL-E. Consider using AI tools yourself to generate other promotional material, such as promotional images, to get more practice using generative AI tools.

Example 1

Design Your Own Chatbot Workshop

Have you ever wanted to build a chatbot that was tailored to your interests and needs? Join us for a fun workshop that will equip you with the expertise to design, customize, and refine your own chatbot!

The workshop will guide participants through the entire process of customizing a chatbot. Starting with a solid design framework, you'll learn how to outline a chatbot that meets a specific user need, incorporating critical elements such as conversation flow, user intents, and responses. We'll share customization techniques that allow your chatbot to embody a unique personality to engage its users. You'll gain hands-on experience with testing methodologies to assess functionality and user experience, leveraging feedback to make your chatbot better with each iteration.

Our workshop will explore these questions:

How could we build chatbots that are both flexible and predictable in teaching and learning contexts?

Which techniques can make interactions feel unique and personal?

What strategies can help your chatbot consistently deliver high-quality responses?

Assessment and evaluation survey

This survey serves multiple functions. It gathers demographic information about the workshop participants, evaluates the workshop's effectiveness, prompts metacognitive reflection, and gathers feedback on improving the workshop. The survey was created in Google Forms. Make a copy of the survey to adapt and keep in your Google Drive.