TAKO – An AI Assistant for Student-Led Design Teams

Objectives

The ErasmusPlus-funded TAKO project aims to utilize a task-oriented AI-powered chatbot to teach Design Thinking in secondary education, promoting innovation, empathy, creativity, collaboration, and problem-solving.

Key results

Outcomes include a low-barrier-to-entry solution for students to be coached in Design Thinking methods, additional facilitation support for teachers, and improvements in software implementation for digital and automated Design Thinking facilitation. The project will result in a functional proof-of-concept chatbot, which 10 teachers and 90 students will test. The chatbot will guide student design teams in selecting the appropriate design method for solving complex problems.

All results will be publicly available and shared during an online event for Design Thinking enthusiasts, researchers, and innovators in education. This project aims to advance digital transformation in education by developing digital capacity through chatbot technology, making learning innovation skills more accessible and offering additional digital support for teachers.

Join our webinar to discover the TAKO chatbot

We are excited to announce two upcoming webinars that delve into the transformative role of Artificial Intelligence in secondary education. Whether you're an educator, a technology enthusiast, or simply curious about the future of learning, these sessions are designed to provide valuable insights and practical applications of AI in the educational sphere and will share the lessons learned from the TAKO-project.

• Dutch Session: Thursday, May 16th, 16:00 - 17:00 CET, tailored for the Flemish and Dutch audience.

• English Session: Thursday, May 23rd, 17:00 - 18:00 CET, designed for an international audience.

Both webinars will feature insights from the Erasmus+ TAKO-project, showcasing a task-oriented AI chatbot designed to facilitate design thinking among students. Dive into discussions about the potential and practical applications of AI in education, and learn how these technologies are paving the way for innovative, empathetic, and collaborative learning environments.

Register now to secure your spot and discover how AI is reshaping education.

Project Timeline

The project runs until July 2024. These are the main activities in this project:

• May—June 2023: Design the AI Assistent
  We will be conducting interviews with teachers and Design Thinking experts to gather information on teaching and applying Design Thinking in an educational setting.

• May—December 2023: Creating TAKO, the AI Assistent
  At the end of this activity, we will deliver and share an open-access code base and high-quality friendly documentation that people want to read.

• July 2023—May 2024: Training the AI Assistent
  The idea is to use conversation data to understand the user based on past interactions and even feed conversations back into the assistant as training data, allowing the assistant to learn and better recognize what users are saying over time. This principle is one key idea behind conversation-driven development of AI Chat Bots.

• October 2023—May 2024: Testing the AI Assistent
  The AI Assistent will be tested in real-life education environments. Students will be using the AI Assistent while applying Design Thinking in a project. Through interviews, we explore whether students liked being mentored by an AI Assistent.

• January 2024—June 2024: Publishing the results
  We will publish a website and embed a functional instance of the TAKO chatbot on the website, providing enough contextual information to understand how, when and why to use the chatbot so that it can serve as a stand-alone solution for people who want to learn design thinking (anywhere and at any time). This way, the chatbot will be free for every teacher and student. The chatbot will, at this stage, function in Dutch.

Partners

Blog articles

The blog articles are written in Dutch and English. The titles below are shown in Dutch.

Join the TAKO project

Are you a teacher, school, or expert interested in fostering innovation, empathy, creativity, and problem-solving skills in upper secondary education? We invite you to participate in the TAKO Project, an exciting Erasmus+ grant initiative that harnesses the power of AI chatbot technology to teach Design Thinking to students.

The TAKO Project aims to create a low-barrier-to-entry solution for students to learn Design Thinking while providing additional facilitation support for teachers in the classroom. Our cutting-edge chatbot will guide students through the Design Thinking process, helping them navigate and select the most suitable method for tackling complex challenges.

We are seeking enthusiastic teachers, schools, and experts to collaborate on this transformative journey. By participating in the TAKO Project, you'll have the opportunity to test our proof-of-concept chatbot and contribute to its development, enhancing the learning experience for students everywhere.

Don't miss this chance to be at the forefront of educational innovation and join a community of like-minded professionals working to shape the future of design thinking education. Together, we can make a lasting impact on how students approach problem-solving and unlock their full creative potential.

Join the TAKO Project today and help revolutionize Design Thinking Education for the next generation!

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Disclaimer

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Erasmus+ programme under project number 2022-2-NL01-KA210-SCH-000099521 . The European Commission’s support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents, which reflect the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.