Use AI chatbots to assist human-led coaching with routine support between sessions while humans retain challenge and goal clarification¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · no claims cited

Description¶

The review recommends hybrid coaching in which AI chatbots are introduced into human-supervised environments or used as supplementary tools between sessions. Studies suggest chatbots effectively provided "routine feedback, prompts, action planning and reflection between sessions", while human coaches retained responsibility for goal clarification, constructive challenge, and intervention. The review concludes hybrid coaching is promising but requires more experimental and longitudinal research.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Human oversight retained for goal clarification, constructive challenge, and intervention; design should preserve user agency without excessive affirmation or dependence

Constraints¶

• The findings were based on short-term processes and did not establish that hybrid coaching was more effective than AI or human only coaching

Target Learners¶

• coaching clients in educational and health contexts
• users of general-purpose LLMs for personal development

Target Learning Goals¶

• sustained behavior change and personal development with safeguards against dependence and misplaced trust

Affordances¶

• Chatbot Technology Working Classification

Related Strategies¶

• Implement AI in assessment as a hybrid support tool for low-stakes, formative stages while humans retain final grading authority
• Allocate human and AI effort by dimension type: automate explicit-criteria dimensions, retain human review for pedagogical judgment
• Implement educational chatbots with human-centred design, explicit AI policies, training, curated knowledge bases and continuous monitoring

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Potel, J. T., & Kumashiro, M. (2026). Artificial Intelligence as a Personal Coach: A Narrative Review of Benefits and Risks in Educational and Health Contexts. Behavioral Sciences, 16(8), 1431. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs16081431