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Project

ConceptualTales: Using Generative AI to Explain Concepts Through Fiction-Inspired Analogies

Copyright

Dunya Baradari

Dunya Baradari 

Education, particularly in STEM and social sciences, often struggles to engage students due to traditional teaching methods that feel detached from their interests. Meanwhile, students dedicate significant time to exploring fictional universes like Harry Potter, Marvel, and Star Wars, which captivate their imaginations with vivid narratives. Teachers, constrained by time and resources, cannot tailor lessons to each student’s personal interests or provide dynamic analogies that resonate with diverse learners. 

This disconnect inspired ConceptualTales, a conversational AI platform designed to make learning more relatable, personalized, and engaging by using these fictional worlds to explain academic concepts. Using large language models, the platform creates personalized analogies between academic concepts and characters, events, or themes from beloved story worlds. For example, it might explain the concept of genetic inheritance by likening it to Harry Potter inheriting magical abilities from his parents. 

Students interact with the AI through a customized interface where they can select their favorite fictional universe, ask questions, and receive answers grounded in both academic rigor and imaginative storytelling.

Copyright

Dunya Baradari

How It Works:

  • Fictional Analogies: The AI synthesizes relationships between educational content and fictional contexts using embeddings, which map semantic relationships in a high-dimensional vector space. This ensures analogies are relevant, creative, and easy to grasp.
  • Interactive Interface: Students choose from a dropdown or type in their favorite story world, receive thematically styled responses, and organize their learning into folders by subject.
  • Socratic Reasoning: The system engages students in reflective dialogue, prompting deeper understanding through thought-provoking questions.

Piloted with students in the USA and China, ConceptualTales has demonstrated its ability to captivate students' interest and engagement. By blending generative AI with the power of storytelling, this exploratory tool opens exciting possibilities for reimagining education for a generation that thrives on creativity and personalization.