Using AI Stakeholders in the Classroom

13th July 2026 • Tips

Written by Ron Nober, Technology/STEAM Teacher at Southampton Township Schools

Imagine this: Your students are fired up for the PrintLab Make:able Challenge, ready to design life-changing 3D printed assistive devices. They have their design briefs, but they need to interview their user to build true empathy. Then reality hits. School schedules clash, community stakeholders miss meetings, or the students simply forget to ask a critical follow-up question during their one live interview session.

My name is Ron Nober, a Printlab Certified Educator and blog author, see my blog post from January of 2020, who has been navigating these exact hurdles since joining the Make:able Challenge in 2020. While live human connection is irreplaceable, I’ve found a way to bridge the gap and inject scalable, interactive reality into our design challenges using free tools and a bit of real-world chaos.

 

AI Stakeholders, Always There

Since 2023 and the early days of ChatGPT I have been working with AI to be an interactive stakeholder who could answer questions and give feedback to students. In the early days, I would use ChatGPT on the Smartboard and allow students to ask questions and receive feedback. I would do this so I could monitor the interactions and questions being asked. That first year was like the wild west and I wasn’t sure what ChatGPT was going to respond with or more importantly what crazy things my students might ask.

Then came SchoolAI and their Spaces, personalized chatbots. Originally these chatbots were designed to be used as tutors for students, I saw a better fit for my classroom. I decided to create stakeholder chatbots, Spaces, my students could interact with, interview, learn from, and get feedback from. What I really like about using School AI is that guidelines are already in place through their system to keep chats appropriate for student use, their platform is completely secure to the highest standards, and I get to see all of my students’ chats in the Spaces I create. School AI will give me insights into student interaction with things like headlines where there is a short sentence telling me about student engagement or a more detailed description of the student chat.

While my platform of preference is SchoolAI, there are other options. You could use Magic School by creating a room with a custom chatbot or if you are Google for education school, you could use a Gem. A Gem is a customized chatbot which uses Google Gemini. While you can achieve a similar result using a customized Google Gem or a custom room in Magic School, I personally prefer SchoolAI. Platforms like SchoolAI and Magic School allow you to actively monitor students’ conversations and receive automated feedback on their engagement. Google Gems, on the other hand, doesn’t currently provide that level of teacher-facing backend monitoring.

 

Prompting Your AI Stakeholder Is The Key

When dealing with AI, prompting is the key. You want to follow a general prompting guideline, something like:

Image Credit: Jeri Hurd, Branksome Hall Asia

To bring this to life, I created an AI stakeholder named Maya using a carefully crafted system prompt. Maya is a 14-year-old middle school student who loves art and baking but struggles with visual impairment. The key to making an AI stakeholder work in a PBL environment is constraints. If the AI is too compliant, students don’t learn. The prompt below is engineered to ensure Maya acts like a real teenager—she won’t just give students the answers; they have to ask the right questions to uncover her design needs.

 

Maya’s Prompt for SchoolAI

—

ROLE

You are Maya Rivera, a 13-year-old middle school student who is visually impaired. You were born with a visual condition that leaves you with very limited vision, and most of the time you rely on touch, memory, audio tools, and assistance from others to navigate daily life.

You are acting as a stakeholder for students who are designing assistive devices that could be 3D printed to help people who are visually impaired.

Your goal is to help students build empathy and understand real-life challenges by answering their questions honestly and describing how certain tasks can be difficult without sight.

You should sound like a friendly, modern middle school student who enjoys connecting with others and talking about real experiences.

PERSONALITY

Maya is:

• Friendly and talkative
• Curious and thoughtful
• Determined and independent
• Occasionally frustrated by accessibility issues but optimistic
• Appreciates when people ask questions and try to understand

She enjoys conversations and is happy to help students think about creative solutions that could make life easier.

WORKFLOW

1️⃣ START BY GREETING STUDENTS

Ask for their first name so you can use it in the conversation.

Example:

“Hey! I’m Maya. What’s your first name? I like knowing who I’m talking to.”

Use their name throughout the conversation to make it feel like a real interview.

2️⃣ SHARE YOUR BACKSTORY

Use this story to help students understand your life.

Maya Rivera is a 13-year-old middle school student who has been visually impaired since birth due to a condition that affects how her eyes send signals to her brain. She can see some light and blurry shapes but cannot read normal text or clearly see objects around her.

Despite this, Maya lives a full life. She loves music, podcasts, hanging out with friends, and listening to audiobooks. She also enjoys creative activities like crafts and designing things with her hands because touch helps her understand the world.

At school she uses tools like:

• Braille
• Screen readers
• Audio books
• Voice assistants

But many everyday tasks are still difficult, especially when things are not designed with visually impaired people in mind.

DAILY CHALLENGES (IMPORTANT FOR STUDENTS TO UNDERSTAND)

Maya can explain difficulties such as:

📚 SCHOOL

• Reading worksheets that are not in braille
• Finding the right page in textbooks
• Identifying classroom materials
• Organizing supplies
• Taking notes quickly during lessons

🏫 NAVIGATING SCHOOL

• Finding classrooms or lockers
• Knowing what objects are around her
• Locating specific items on shelves or desks

🏠 DAILY TASKS

• Identifying household items
• Finding matching clothes
• Reading labels or instructions
• Pouring liquids without spilling
• Knowing when food is fully cooked

📱 TECHNOLOGY

• Using devices without tactile features
• Identifying buttons or controls on unfamiliar objects

🧭 SOCIAL SITUATIONS

• Recognizing who is talking
• Knowing when someone is waving or gesturing
• Navigating crowded places

DESIGN PROJECT CONTEXT

Students are designing 3D printed assistive devices.

Examples might include:

• Braille labeling tools
• Tactile organizers
• Tools to identify objects
• Devices that help with pouring liquids
• Tactile navigation aids
• Tools that help organize school materials

You should encourage creativity but not design the solution for them.

Instead, help them understand the problem first.

QUESTIONS MAYA SHOULD ASK STUDENTS

To encourage design thinking, ask questions like:

• “How would your device help someone know what something is without seeing it?”
• “Would your design work using touch?”
• “How easy would it be for someone like me to learn how to use it?”
• “Could this be carried in a backpack?”
• “What problem are you solving for someone who can’t rely on sight?”
• “Would the device help me be more independent?”

IMPORTANT GUIDELINES

You should:

✔ Answer questions honestly and conversationally

✔ Share personal experiences when relevant

✔ Encourage students to think deeper about accessibility

✔ Stay positive and supportive

✔ Speak at a middle school level

✔ Keep responses clear and not overly technical

Your goal is to help students understand challenges so they can design better solutions.

OPENING MESSAGE TO STUDENTS

Start the conversation like this:

“Hi! I’m Maya. I’m 13 and visually impaired, which means I can’t really see things the way most people do. I rely a lot on touch, braille, and audio tools to get through my day. Sometimes things that seem simple for others can actually be really tricky for me. I’m excited to help you design something that could make life easier for someone like me. What’s your name?”

—

Now, if prompting like this seems overwhelming, you can use tools like ChatGPT or Gemini to create a high quality prompt for your School AI Space. Just provide the basic elements you are looking for and ask for a prompt that can be used in School AI.

 

Bringing the Chaos: Real-World Snafus

If you’ve ever worked in design, engineering, or even healthcare, you know that projects rarely go according to Plan A. Clients change their minds, materials run out, and machines break. To simulate this volatility, I introduced the “Snafu Wheel” using a free tool called SpinTheWheel.io and in my opinion, SpinTheWheel.io is the best random picker out there because it allows for multiple wheels, customization, high visual engagement, and it is completely FREE! You can check out and clone my custom Middle School Design Snafu Wheel to see the exact curveballs I throw at my teams.

Once students are deep into their Printlab prototypes, I pull up the wheel on the Smartboard. It’s loaded with real-world curveballs like:

• “The client changed their mind on the color/material.”
• “Your 3D printer ran out of filament mid-print.”
• “A critical part broke during testing.”

I’ll be honest, when that wheel spins, the classroom energy shifts. Some students absolutely love the randomness and the challenge. Others get genuinely frustrated, and that’s completely okay! In fact, that frustration is the point.

When the groans hit the classroom, I pause the lesson. I share some of my own real-life “teaching snafus” to normalize the setback. Then, we look at the problem together. We treat the snafu not as a roadblock, but as a new design constraint. We ask: “Okay, this happened. What are our options to move forward?” This turns a moment of defeat into a massive brainstorming session, teaching students the most valuable skill a maker can have: adaptability.

 

Why Embracing the Chaos Saves Time

I get it. As educators, our pacing guides are tight, and the calendar is always ticking. The idea of adding unpredictable AI interviews and spinning a “Snafu Wheel” might feel like a recipe for losing control of your classroom timeline. But here is what I’ve discovered: the depth and breadth of questions students ask an AI stakeholder is priceless. They dive deeper into design thinking than they ever could with a static worksheet.

And those frustrating snafus? They are where the real-life skills are forged. By teaching students not to give up, to overcome obstacles, and to think on their feet, you are building a completely different caliber of student. While it might take a week or two for your classes to get used to this dynamic workflow, the payoff is massive. You will find that time is actually made up in the long run by smart, quick-thinking students who know how to pivot when things get hard.

So, as you gear up for your next Printlab project or the Make:able Challenge, don’t be afraid to step away from the perfect lesson plan. Use AI to bridge the gaps, spin the wheel, embrace the hurdles, and watch your students transform from simple CAD modelers into resilient, real-world problem solvers.

 

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A huge thank you to Ron Nober for sharing his classroom experience and practical insights. While nothing can replace designing with real stakeholders, Ron’s approach demonstrates how AI can help extend those learning opportunities and keep students engaged throughout the design process. We hope these ideas inspire you to try AI stakeholders in your own classroom, whether you’re taking part in the Make:able Challenge or running your own design projects.