DCE Bot Club

The advent of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) caused concerns among DCE instructors about academic integrity. But could GenAI be used to enhance student learning?  In January 2025, with the help of Teaching & Learning and HUIT staff, a group of DCE Instructors formed the DCE Bot Club. Our goal: To use a chatbot—a text-based GenAI tool tailored for their own course to support student learning—in a community of practice for responsible exploration, instructional design guidance, and mutual support.

Club Kickoff

The January kickoff meeting gathered 30+ instructors; some simply AI-curious. A core group of 10 instructors committed to piloting a chatbot in their Spring course and sharing what they learned. Most instructors used either PingPong, or HUbot, chatbot tools approved and supported by HUIT. Instructor chatbot ideas included:

• tutor bot with lecture material
• brainstorming buddy for a creativity and innovation course
• guest lecture assistants for a corporate responsibility course
• role play bot to help students practice challenging conversations
• critical thinking trainer to help students navigate polarizing views

• capstone assistant for a data analytics course

   

Spring Term

Bot Club met virtually in January, March, and May, and used an email list and individual consultations between meetings. We discussed challenges and considerations, including: 

• bot testing methods
• student onboarding
• LLM content bias and hallucination
• bots’ over-eagerness to please, convincing users that false information is true  
• best practices to foster critical thinking

• cheating concerns

   

Initial Student Feedback

• “It really helped me dial in my final project ideas”
• “I liked that we could ask questions we might not feel comfortable asking the teaching staff, and got an answer directly. Having an easy conversation vs drafting emails to TAs saves a lot of time.”
• “It helps clarify questions [...] when I am not sure if my dataset meets the requirements.”
• “I liked that it gave references to modules we learned about, so we could go back to our notes [...] with an idea of exactly what to look for.“

Takeaways and Next Steps: DCE and Beyond

We shared our experiences and takeaways at the Harvard IT Summit via a panel discussion with four core bot club instructors. See the Slide Presentation (PDF) and Takeaway Handout (PDF) for more.

We are actively sharing what we’ve learned and developed with other Harvard schools. This summer, we’re conducting small group drop-ins on GenAI on focused topics (on Jul 14 and Jul 31). Instructors can join the DCE Bot Club email list to share ideas, experiences, and resources. For one-on-one help, sign up for a Course Chatbot Consultation. 

Long term, we hope to cultivate a vibrant faculty community focused on responsibly and ethically advancing generative AI in teaching, both with chatbots, and beyond!

Additional Tools and Resources 

In response to ongoing faculty feedback, we've developed customized resources:

• DCE's Checklist of Considerations: Guides bot builders through pedagogical, ethical, implementation and other considerations. (PDF)
• Prompt Library (PDF): Sample prompts from different faculty use cases.

For More Information 

Contact Ethan Contini-Field of the DCE Course Design Team.