Students on a course about counselling use chatbots to simulate a conversation between the upper secondary school student ‘Karla’, who struggles to attend classes, and her student counsellor. In the simulation, the chatbot assumes the role of 'Karla', with whom the students enter into a dialogue. In the activity, the students practise their counselling skills and they reflect on the chatbot's potential to help them practise.
GAI is becoming more and more widespread and it is important that we introduce students to how GAI affects, and can be used in, counselling contexts. We wanted to present this field in a motivating way, giving students the possibility to actively work with the chatbots and discuss their potential for simulated counselling sessions. We also wanted to make students aware of the importance of the absence of body language and nonverbal signals in written forms of counselling, such as e-counselling. Lastly, we wanted to create a space in which students could share their experiences and reflect on them in a shared dialogue to support the collective learning process.
The purpose of the activity is for students to:
be introduced to how they can practise their counselling skills through simulated counselling sessions with a chatbot
gain an understanding of how their response affects how the session unfolds (the importance of context/prompt)
practise the role of observer of a counselling session
practise reflecting critically on simulated counselling sessions with chatbots and the learning outcomes of this activity
have the opportunity to discuss their shared experience of practising their counselling skills in a simulated interaction with a chatbot
THE PROCESS | |||
In plenum | Introductory lecture (90 min). Introduce students to GAI and counselling through a lecture and short discussion, prior to introducing the activity. | ||
In plenum | Introduction to the activity (8 min). Show students an example of a simulated counselling session with a chatbot. Explain where they can find prompts and a step-by-step activity description on Brightspace. | ||
In groups | Completing the activity (12 min). The students are divided into groups of three. One student assumes the role of student counsellor, while the other two act as co-counsellors and at the same time observe how the interaction unfolds.
| ||
In groups | Follow-up reflection (10 min). Students use the following questions to reflect in their groups:
| ||
In groups | Wrapping up (7 min). Class discussion of the students’ experiences. | ||
RESSOURCES FOR STUDENTS | SUPPORT FOR STUDENTS |
|
|
Students all had the opportunity to simulate a counselling session with a chatbot, which none of them had done before. They gained awareness of how important the context of the prompt is for how the dialogue unfolds. They drew parallels to the importance of working with context in real counselling sessions.
A fundamental point in the field of counselling is that the counsellor’s questions shape how a conversation unfolds. Students experienced this in a new way.
Students were able to reflect on why they asked the questions they did during the sessions, and what other questions they could have asked.
Students became aware of the importance of body language in in-person counselling sessions by its absence in the chatbot simulation.
Students gained more perspectives on working with chatbots by discussing their different experiences.
Some students experienced the simulated counselling session as “unrealistic”, because the chatbot gave answers that were too good to be a student’s (for example). This gave rise to a discussion about whether the outcome of the exercise depended on whether it was perceived as authentic or not, and how to better prompt the chatbot to act the way the students wanted it to.
The problems that students experienced during the activity can often be used for a larger discussion of relevant issues that occur in counselling. For example, what do you do or say to a client who doesn’t answer directly, repeats themselves a lot, uses too many or too few words, expresses their feelings or doesn’t express their feelings?
| Educator | Helle Merete Nordentoft and Tine Wirenfeldt Jensen |
| Faculty and department | Danish School of Education, Education Studies, Emdrup |
| Degree programme | Education Studies |
| Level of study | Marster's |
| Course/subject | Counselling as Institutional and Pedagogical Practice |
| Number of students | 20 |
| Extent | Activity |
| Teaching format | Classroom instruction |
| Implementation | In groups |
Please contact the editors at AU Educate if you have any questions about the content of the platform or if you need consultation on your teaching from one of the many skilled professionals at the Centre for Educational Development.
