Maike: a Socratic Chatbot

Context 

Significant advancements in the performance of chatbots powered by large language models (LLMs) have raised concerns about students potentially becoming overly reliant on these tools, which may diminish their capacity for independent and critical thinking. Instead of letting chatbots undermine our cognitive abilities, our goal is to create a chatbot that actively fosters the development of critical thinking and self-regulation skills. 

Maike, a Socratic chatbot 

Our aim is to implement a chatbot, Maike, designed to align with pedagogical principles by promoting critical thinking, purposeful and self-regulated learning, and self-efficacy. To do so, we propose using Socratic dialogues to enhance learning experiences by having the chatbot ask the right questions rather than provide immediate answers. The proposed approach combines the traditional elements of Socratic questioning with the innovative capabilities of AI, aiming to create a personalized, responsive and enjoyable learning experience.

User study 

We want to conduct a user study to evaluate empirically the effectiveness of Maike with students from the Theory of Knowledge class in the IB curriculum. 

Talks

Towards Student-Centric AI-Supported Learning: Teaching Chatbots to Ask the Right Questions

Our scientific publications