Co-design and testing of an educational chatbot for teaching political representation through history

This paper presents the design and implementation of a chatbot developed to support history teaching in primary schools. The project was inspired by two main goals: on the one side, we wanted to involve teachers and educators in the creation of the chatbot, asking them to co-design both the character and the content to be delivered; on the other side, we wanted to test the use of dramatization techniques for the design of the chatbot. The validation of the chatbot was conducted through an experimental phase involving five primary school classes. The classes experience with the chatbot received positive ratings, thus confirming its capability to engage the users with its behavior and appearance. The study also demonstrates the importance of teacher collaboration in the development of educational technologies: the design principles behind chatbots illustrate the broader mechanics of how generative AI systems operate in tasks like content creation, problem-solving, and personalized interactions. This allowed us to introduce AI-based tools to the teachers in a conscious and participatory manner.