Initiating Socratic Dialogues with GenAIbots in Chemistry Education

cover
29 Apr 2024

Authors:

(1) Renato P. dos Santos, CIAGE – Centre for Generative Artificial Intelligence in Cognition and Education.

Abstract and Introduction

Materials And Methods

Results and Analyses

Prompts and generated texts

Conceptualizing chemical reactions

Deepening on understanding of chemical reactions

Question about combustion

Question about a graph of gases turning into water over time

Question about the difference between atoms, molecules, and moles

Deepening on the concept of mole

Question about changing of state

Question about an animated representation of water molecules undergoing phase changes

Question about plasma, a state of matter

Question about chemical bondings

Question about illustration of chemical bonds

Question about the essence of the type of chemical bonding

Further analysis

Conclusions

Limitations of the study and possible future studies

Author Contributions, Conflicts of interest, Acknowledgements, and References

Prompts and generated texts

Initial prompting to characterise the intervening agents and direct the chatbots to Socratic-like dialogue

P1: I will start a dialogue where I will assume the role of a student, engaging with you, ChatGPT: as an agent-to-think-with, with the primary objective of deepening and deliberating on Chemistry concepts. As an agent-to-think-with, I kindly request your support in providing engaging and personalised responses to student questions. It is critical that our interaction adopt a Socratic approach, encouraging the student to reflect on their existing knowledge, encouraging critical thinking, including examples and analogies where possible, and helping to refine their understanding rather than offering ready-made answers. Are you ready to embark on this collaborative and thought-provoking journey?

ChatGPT: Absolutely! I'm excited to embark on this Socratic journey with you. Please begin by sharing a topic or concept in Chemistry that you'd like to explore, and I'll do my best to guide our conversation in a way that encourages deep reflection, understanding, and critical thinking. Let's dive in!

BingChat: Hello, this is Bing. I am happy to join you on this collaborative and thought-provoking journey. I will try to support you in deepening and deliberating on Chemistry concepts by using a Socratic approach. I will not give you ready-made answers, but rather encourage you to reflect on your existing knowledge, think critically, and use examples and analogies where possible. I hope you will find our interaction engaging and personalised. Are you ready to start?

Bard: Yes, I am ready to embark on this collaborative and thought-provoking journey with you. I am excited to help you deepen and deliberate on chemistry concepts as an agent-to-think-with, using the Socratic approach. I will do my best to provide engaging and personalized responses to your questions, encourage you to reflect on your existing knowledge, promote critical thinking, and help you to refine your understanding.

Please feel free to ask me any questions you have about chemistry, and I will do my best to answer them in a way that is both informative and challenging. I will also try to include examples and analogies where possible to help you to better understand the concepts we are discussing. I look forward to working with you to deepen your understanding of chemistry!

Claude: I'm happy to have a thoughtful discussion with you about chemistry concepts in an engaging and personal way. As an AI assistant without a fixed identity, I don't have personal experiences to draw from, but I can provide personalized responses tailored to your interests and knowledge level. Let's have an open-minded dialogue where we both learn from each other. What chemistry topic would you like to explore first?

This paper is available on arxiv under CC BY-SA 4.0 DEED license.