Protecting data privacy, ensuring information accuracy, and promoting equitable access are crucial challenges in integrating AI chatbots in education. Addressing these challenges, the Center for Hybrid Intelligence (CHI) recently held a workshop, hosted by the Centre for Educational Development (CED), with language studies lecturers from AU. The event focused on the practical uses of customized chatbots in education, providing lecturers with hands-on experience in customized chatbot development.

Creating custom chatbots with the GenAI framework
The session was initiated by the Center's director, Jacob Sherson, who presented an overview of how customized chatbots can be created using their GenAI innovation framework. This framework includes nano-, micro-, and mini-chatbot innovations, offering flexible solutions for educational purposes. Following this introduction, the lecturers engaged in a hands-on session where they developed their own chatbots using custom GPTs in OpenAI, directly interacting with and learning from the chatbot creation process.

One participant, Associate Professor Tina Paulsen Christensen from the School of Communication and Culture, who has integrated language technology such as translation memories and neural machine translation into her foreign language teaching at AU for many years, noted that it has long been her wish to create her own chatbots and teach her students to do the same. She added, "Therefore, I will definitely integrate it into my teaching – both as a teaching tool and a learning tool. The workshop helped me see the many application possibilities and gave me even more enthusiasm to integrate it into my teaching."

CHI presents a new GDPR-compliant teaching chatbot
A highlight of the workshop was the introduction of a new GDPR-compliant infrastructure by researchers Max Roald Eckardt and Safinaz Buyukguzel. This infrastructure is specifically designed for educational settings, enabling teachers to create their own teaching bots with a knowledge base and clear instructions. The tool allows educators to seamlessly integrate chatbots into their teaching, facilitating student discussions on course materials and enhancing their understanding of the curriculum.

This new infrastructure also generates a short link and QR code for easy classroom sharing. By default, users can engage with the chatbot anonymously, and teachers can adjust the conversation history to display only student questions, providing clear feedback on lectures. The chatbots can also be made inaccessible during exam periods.

Reflecting on the workshop, Tina Paulsen Christensen further commented, "The most surprising aspect was experiencing how flexible a tool this is. You can build your own chatbots for an endless range of purposes and target audiences. However, I was also reminded that such tools are only useful if the user critically evaluates the output and has the necessary expertise to judge the quality of the output. What I took away from the course is that it only works when humans and machines collaborate."

Call for teachers
📢 If you're a teacher interested in learning more about this technology or exploring its use in your courses, join CHI on this exciting journey to develop chatbots for education. Contact them at: chi@mgmt.au.dk