Plenary - TCC 2026 The EduBot-a-thon: Building to Think in a Philosophy of Education Classroom
Custom AI chatbots built by faculty and staff are increasingly common, supporting learning, feedback, motivation, and more. This same technology takes on a new dimension when students are put in the driver’s seat. The EduBot-a-thon is a teaching artifact developed over two years, in which students progress from exploring custom bots to identifying an educational problem, ideating and designing their own custom bot, and implementing it. In the latest iteration, inspired by NASA Space Apps and coding communities, teams assume cross-functional roles, work in time-boxed sprints, and deliver short pitches that clarify a bot’s purpose, boundaries, and intended users. Research findings from student evaluations and reflections will be shared, highlighting how “building AI” and “getting under the hood” cultivates critical AI literacy and purposeful creativity.
Casandra Silva Siblin, Lecturer in Philosophy
Casandra Silva Sibilin is a Lecturer in Philosophy at York College, City University of New York (CUNY), specializing in philosophy of education and the role of generative AI in teaching and learning. She co-founded Don’t AI Alone, a cross-campus community for inclusive, interdisciplinary dialogue across 25 CUNY campuses, and led the Education team for Building Bridges of Knowledge, a CUNY-wide fellowship supporting ethical and effective student AI use. Her work includes open educational resources that help educators and students design their own AI tools, including Student-Made Bots: An Educator’s Toolkit. Beyond CUNY, she leads the Custom Bots/GPTs subgroup within a global AI in Education community connected to the POD Network. She is currently writing a book on AI pedagogy through the lens of foundational thinkers in philosophy of education.
