The primary objectives of this project were to design and create a chatbot that supports students in navigating and selecting suitable design thinking methods, train the chatbot to improve its effectiveness, and provide students with fewer opportunities a chance to enhance their design thinking knowledge. Additionally, we aimed to disseminate the developed chatbot and its results. Due to the advent and integration of LLM technologies, we extended our original objective to include the development of a general-purpose design thinking chatbot. This chatbot now supports students and teachers by addressing both general and specific questions about the design thinking methodology and various design methods.
We initiated this project to enhance creative problem-solving in secondary education through design thinking. Our goal was to support teachers and students in effectively implementing this methodology. Key challenges identified were: - Teacher needs: the high workload in project-based settings prevents effective facilitation for multiple student groups, leading to disengagement. - Student needs: a lack of personalized, just-in-time instructions due to the high student-teacher ratio. - Pedagogical need: success in design thinking requires thorough engagement with the theory and practice, where additional coaching can potentially boost self-efficacy and lower classroom entry barriers for teachers to start using the approach. To address these issues, we experimented with a chatbot. Initially planned as a rule-based system, the project evolved to integrate advanced technologies like Chat GPT and other large language models (LLMs), enhancing our educational approach and broadening the scope of traditional chatbots. This project exceeded our objectives, delivering a functional general-purpose chatbot that facilitates a design thinking process.