Aspen: a prompt-engineered AI chatbot peer mentor for inquiry revision¶
Design · All designs
Evidence · no claims cited
Description¶
Aspen is a custom AI chatbot built as a prompt-engineered pedagogical agent on a general-purpose GPT model, not a fine-tuned model, with behavior shaped through system-level instructions, response-format constraints, task-specific scaffolds, and iterative testing. It was positioned as "a peer mentor for middle school agricultural research teams," using brief, friendly, task-relevant language and prioritizing questions, hints, feedback, and explanations over unrestricted answer provision. The web-based interface (Flutter Web) included a text chat window and animated 3-D avatar, with interactions logged in Firebase Realtime Database.
Design Implications¶
Context¶
Requirements¶
- Task-specific grounding, iterative testing, and prompt constraints to reduce risks of hallucinated or instructionally misaligned content and answer-oriented interaction
Constraints¶
- Because Aspen relied on a general-purpose model, its responses remained subject to variability, occasional hallucination, and imperfect alignment with domain-specific instructional goals; safeguards are design measures, not independent verification of response quality
Target Learners¶
- eighth-grade students in a rural agriculture-STEM classroom
Learning Goals¶
- revising research questions and hypotheses against inquiry criteria
Claims¶
Related Designs¶
- Jordan Chatbot: a unit-specific GPT-4o pedagogical support agent grounded in constructivist and socio-cultural learning theory
- Seven unit-specific custom GPT chatbots for pharmaceutical science units
Examples¶
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Key Sources¶
- Kilinc, S., Aldemir, T., Misiejuk, K., Kaliisa, R., Sabanwar, V., Bicer, A., Song, D., & Yalvac, B. (2026). A mixed-methods analysis of AI scaffolding patterns and student inquiry profiles in a middle-school agriculture-STEM classroom. Computers and Education: Artificial Intelligence, 11, 100683. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.caeai.2026.100683
Page metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
type |
design |
id |
aspen-ai-chatbot-peer-mentor |
title |
Aspen: a prompt-engineered AI chatbot peer mentor for inquiry revision |
description |
Aspen is a custom AI chatbot built as a prompt-engineered pedagogical agent on a general-purpose GPT model, not a fine-tuned model, with behavior shaped through system-level instructions, response-format constraints,... |
status |
review |
generated |
by process:settle-candidates on 2026-10-12 |
trust |
unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content |
sources |
1 — kilinc-2026 |
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