It Started with a Business Idea—and Better Questions to Ask.
Dialog Lab began in a small-business and entrepreneurship course. Participants acted as consultants, interviewing an entrepreneur about a new business idea before recommending whether to proceed, revise the plan, or pursue a different direction.
The activity asked participants to discover information through conversation: choose useful questions, follow up on incomplete answers, and explain what they learned as a group.
Now we’re piloting the app in Fall 2026 and exploring how other instructors might use this format in their own teaching.
Beyond "Prompt-and-Paste" AI
Why not just paste a prompt into ChatGPT?
Pasting instructions into general chatbots is an easy first experiment, but it quickly breaks down in an active lab seminar. When learning requires inquiry, raw prompts leak secrets, isolate participants, leave instructors blind, and produce erratic conversations. Here is how Dialog Lab solves the limits of the manual approach.
Genuine Discovery vs. Prompt Leakage
The "Prompt-and-Paste" Limit: Giving away the game
When students paste a prompt or use Custom GPTs, they can inspect the persona’s instructions, private constraints, walk-away thresholds, and rubrics before typing a word. The learning scenario is spoiled before inquiry even starts.
How Dialog Lab Solves It: True server-side confidentiality
Private facts, stakeholder motivations, and blind spots are securely composed on the server and never exposed to the browser. Students must uncover critical information through strategic questioning, active listening, and probing follow-ups.
Asymmetric information preserves the pedagogical purpose of the case.
Collaborative conversations vs. solitary chat
The "Prompt-and-Paste" Limit: Solitary homework in a silo
Standard consumer chatbots are strictly 1-on-1. Participants sit alone at their screens, missing out on the peer debate, challenge, and consensus-building that makes interactive lab role-play so memorable.
How Dialog Lab Solves It: Real-time team role-play
Students join a collaborative conversation where they share their exchange with the persona. Together, they build on each other's inquiries and synthesize evidence in real time.
Turns isolated AI interaction into social, high-retention team learning.
Live Orchestration vs. Instructor Blind Spots
The "Prompt-and-Paste" Limit: Flying blind during class
Instructors have zero live visibility into conversations across the class. If a student gets stuck, drifts off-topic, or encounters a wild hallucination, the instructor cannot intervene until reviewing post-hoc links or papers.
How Dialog Lab Solves It: The live instructor cockpit
A centralized dashboard mirrors every conversation in real time. Instructors spot automated moderation cues, send broadcast guidance, pause conversations for teachable moments, or "rewind and branch" a conversation.
Keeps the instructor in the loop as an active facilitator, not a bystander.
Governed Pedagogy vs. Model Drift
The "Prompt-and-Paste" Limit: Inconsistent models & sycophancy
Students use different accounts and free tiers with varying capabilities. Chatbots frequently cave to student demands prematurely, ask passive questions like "Does that make sense?", or lose track of lesson objectives after a few turns.
How Dialog Lab Solves It: Governed pedagogy & transcripts
Enforce consistent pedagogical structure through multi-persona casting. Standardized model routing ensures equitable challenge, and one-click session exports provide full transcripts and participation data for grading and debrief.
A repeatable, reliable learning experience across the entire lab series.
Designed for courses where inquiry, evidence, and debrief matter.
Transform AI from a solitary study aid into a rigorous, collaborative lab simulation.
Which activities fit your series and learning goals?
What do participants find useful, confusing, or difficult?
What support do you need to prepare and facilitate a lab?
What makes the resulting conversations useful for a debrief?
This beta is an opportunity to try the tool and share feedback. We have not established that Dialog Lab improves learning outcomes or is more effective than a standard case study.