Personas | Lunch Talk at Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences

This meeting is organised for employees of the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences (FMG).

Personas: Advanced chatbot building in UvA AI Chat and how to use them for education
By Jacqui Edwards & Koen van Elsen

This lunch session introduces lectures to the next level of working with UvA AI Chat through persona-based chatbot design. Participants will learn how to build and customize AI personas that can reliably perform specific tasks, support classroom activities, or simulate expert roles. The session will discuss different types of chatbots (task, discussion, and information retrieval bots), design principles, common pitfalls, and live examples of how personas can enhance teaching, learning, and research workflows.

Learning goals

• Understand what standard prompts and personas are, how they differ from basic GenAI use, and when each is appropriate;
• Explain why well-designed personas are valuable, and distinguish between the main types (task, discussion, information retrieval);
• Know the design strategy for a simple persona, including using AI “cheat codes” to accelerate development;
• Recognize pitfalls and limitations in persona design and know how to avoid them;
• Evaluate how and by whom personas can be created and used (individually, co-created, made by students), and clarify the difference between personal and classroom use.

Date: Tuesday 19 May 2026

Register (via TLC-FMG)

The GenAI Living Lab team contributes to these sessions with the aim of improving AI literacy among the academics and to actively involve students and staff it in the development and application of GenAI in education at the University of Amsterdam.