Reference-Based Chatbot
Chatbots based on course materials
Last updated February 28, 2025.
These bots use course materials as reference when responding to prompts. All that is needed are the course materials as PDFs, for example the script, exercices, slides, etc.
When a student asks a a question, the bot first looks for relevant passages of the course materials and then answers based on that information. For example, in the image below, the student asked about "that example of the table with the lights" - the bot finds this example (depicted on the left side of the figure) and responds based on it.
The bots can be programmed to provide more than one response to the same query; the student can then choose with which response to continue the conversation.
In the example below, the model on the left side provides a quick response, while the model on the right builds up and derives the answer.
Another mode is to not directly answer the question, but guide the student towards a solution. In the example below, the bot is instructed to not simply write a finished program, but to ask the right questions for students to write it themselves.
If you would like a bot for your official ETH-course, please contact Gerd Kortemeyer, .
Please note that for copyright reasons, we cannot process materials by third parties such as publishing companies unless the license explicitly permits us to do so. This includes research papers that are not open-access or textbook materials that are not covered by for example Creative Commons (CC).