Questioning with Chatbots: GenAI-Supported Study and Research Paths in Mathematical Modelling

Speaker: 

Alissa Fock, U. of Würzburg

Abstract:

Study and Research Paths (SRPs) can function as an interpretative lens to analyze learners’ engagement with mathematical modelling questions and as a way of realizing the paradigm of questioning the world. However, working on open modelling questions within SRPs can pose challenges to students (Jessen, 2024). New technical opportunities raise the question of how chatbots based on generative AI (GenAI) may influence and potentially support SRPs (Carlsen & Jessen, 2025).

This talk will provide insights into ongoing research on using a GenAI-based chatbot as a scaffolding tool during an SRP. The chatbot has been customized for educational purposes using a system prompt based on literature on scaffolding, mathematical modelling, and prompt engineering (Fock et al., submitted). In the talk, examples from student interactions with each other and with the chatbot are presented and analyzed to investigate how the GenAI-based chatbot shaped the question answer dynamics within the SRP. Results highlight scenarios in which the chatbot’s questions enable further students questioning and those where they do not encourage it. The findings may have implications for GenAI-assisted implementations of SRPs and for the design of GenAI-based chatbots.

References:

Carlsen, L. M., & Jessen, B. E. (2025). University students learning to model through large amounts of data, simulations and ChatGPT. In M. Bosch, G. Bolondi, S. Carreira, C. Spagnolo, & M. Gaidoschik (Eds.), Proceedings of the Fourteenth Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (CERME14). Free University of Bozen-Bolzano and ERME. https://hal.science/hal-05201332v1

Fock, A., Tröbelsberger, L., & Siller, H.-S. (submitted). From System Prompts to Effective Scaffolding: Expert Rating of GenAI-Based Support for Mathematical Modelling. Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics.

Jessen, B. E. (2024). Media and Milieu Dialectics and New Resources Available for Students. In I. Florensa, N. Ruiz-Munzón, K. Markulin, B. Barquero, M. Bosch, & Y. Chevallard (Eds.), Extended Abstracts 2022 (Vol. 16, pp. 293–302). Springer Nature Switzerland. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-55939-6_23