Google Gems: Custom Chatbots for Active, Inquiry-Based Learning


Google Gems are custom chatbots built inside Google Gemini. When designed and incorporated thoughtfully into teaching, Gems have the potential to enhance student engagement, personalize instruction, and cultivate essential metacognitive and collaborative skills.

Instructors at the U of A are using Gems to enable a wide range of active learning experiences. For instance:

  • Socratic partner: The Gem asks questions that prompt the student to reflect and think critically about a topic, a reading, an assignment, etc.

  • Interactive case study: The Gem plays out a defined persona (e.g. a senior citizen with mobility challenges), enabling the student to practice a particular skill (e.g. a social case worker developing a support plan).

  • Guided practice: The Gem offers step-by-step support to a student who is learning or practicing a particular problem-solving task.

  • Writing coach: The Gem helps a student evaluate a draft, identify areas for improvement, and develop a revision plan.

Gems and other AI tools are only trustworthy and effective when an instructor explains to students the pedagogical purpose for including the tool in their teaching, and when the instructor and students evaluate, together, the output of the tool and what value it has brought to the learner.

Cautionary note: Although AI technology may be useful in teaching and learning, it also poses ethical, privacy, and pedagogical risks. Before integrating AI into your teaching practice, acquaint yourself with the U of A’s Framework for the Responsible Use of AI, which sets forth practices which mitigate these risks. In addition, we encourage you time to spend some time going through CTL's web resources: Teaching and Learning in the Context of AI.


What goes into a Gem?

A Gem can be tailored to enable your students to interact with course content, engage in interactive case studies, discuss their ideas or writing, support groupwork dynamics, and more.

“Tailoring” a Gem to your purposes involves two steps:

  1. Creating clear instructions that define how the Gem should behave. This is known as “prompt engineering.” More about this below.

  2. Choosing the trusted sources of information that you want your Gem to draw upon. These could include course notes, assignment prompts, readings, case studies, etc.

Developing the initial version of your Gem might only take a few minutes. But testing, revising, and iterating on a Gem may take an hour or more. Once you are satisfied with the outputs of the Gem, you can save it and share the link with your students, as you would any Google document.

Step 1: Give your Gem clear instructions

“Prompt” refers to the question or instruction that a human enters into an AI platform. Much of the time, users rely on short prompts. “Help me plan a trip to Rome” or “Write me a poem about frogs.”

But a prompt can be much more elaborate and precise than this. One of the great benefits of building a Gem is that you can craft a detailed prompt and save it for reuse, or share it with your students.

CRAFT is a mnemonic that can help you build a well-detailed prompt that will increase the likelihood that your Gem will behave as intended.

C - Context: What use will the Gem serve?

R - Role: What role will the Gem play?

A - Action: What task will the Gem perform?

F - Format: What form should the Gem's responses take?

T - Target audience and tone: Who will be interacting with the Gem, and what tone should the interaction take?

Here’s an illustration of a prompt that follows the CRAFT approach.
You'll learn more about the "knowledge areas" and "personas" mentioned here in Step 2, below.

This Gem will be used in the context of an undergraduate environmental science course.

Take the role of a property developer seeking advice about potential pollutants in a parcel of land. Several personas are included in the Knowledge area in the Gem. Stick with one persona through the full chat session.

Simulate an interaction between yourself (the property developer) and an environmental consultant (the gem user).

The interaction should be professional and conversational. Do not volunteer insights that exceed your role. In this scenario, the user should be the expert who is directing with questions. However, if the user asks for help, offer subtle cues that help them formulate good questions.

The user for this Gem is a second-year undergraduate student in environmental science who has completed the first two units of the course. A copy of the course syllabus has been included in the Knowledge area, so that you can gauge the level of the user’s expertise.

Step 2: Select sources for your Gem

The knowledge that large language models (LLMs) possess comes from exposure to massive volumes of information (aka “model training”), information gleaned from the user’s prompts, and real-time access to the internet during a chat session.

A Gem enables you to designate selected sources of information as a trusted source of truth, or as source material that isn’t present elsewhere on the Internet. For instance, you might include a report from the Public Health Agency of Canada as ground truth for a vaccination simulation, to ensure that the Gem draws upon scientifically-valid principles (rather than questionable information it finds elsewhere on the internet). Or for the CRAFT prompt example above, you could include a document containing a number of personas that the Gem can choose from, as it role-plays its part in an interactive case study.

The technical piece: How to actually build a Gem

The following steps are illustrated in the below short video walkthrough.

  1. On your device, go to gemini.google.com.

  2. On the left-hand menu, click Explore Gems, then select + New Gem.

  3. Name your Gem and give it a brief description.

  4. Develop your prompt and enter it in the “Instructions” field. If you need help crafting an effective prompt, try this CTL PrompTutor.

  5. Upload sources to the Knowledge area.

  6. Save your work and choose your Share settings.


Build trust and gather feedback

Although your students may have experience using AI tools, do not presume that they understand the risks in using AI, or that they will use AI in ways that you intend in your course. Therefore:

  • Clearly explain to students what uses of AI are permitted in your course. It may be that AI is permitted for certain uses, or on certain assignments, but not others. Your students are navigating the expectations of multiple instructors. Therefore: be clear; explain your rationale; and offer frequent reminders.

  • Provide alternatives for students who opt out of AI use.

  • Especially when it comes to using AI in your teaching, gather feedback from your students about their experiences with the tool, concerns they have, and the value they got out of using the tool. Gather this feedback live, through classroom discussion and/or through reflective writing.

Your posture towards using and evaluating AI tools is what your students will emulate. To the extent that you model curiosity, critical distance, transparency, and the wisdom to decide when to set AI tools aside—your students will learn from your example.


Evolving your teaching practice

  • How could a Gem foster deeper learning in your subject area?
  • What student needs or challenges could be supported by a Gem?
  • How can you ensure your Gem use aligns with inclusive and ethical teaching practices?
  • What feedback loops will you establish to evaluate the effectiveness of your Gem?

Learn more

U of A resources

University of Alberta, Centre for Teaching and Learning. (n.d.). Academic integrity and AI use. https://www.ualberta.ca/en/centre-for-teaching-and-learning/resources/generative-ai/academic-integrity-ai-use/index.html

University of Alberta, Centre for Teaching and Learning. (2025). GEMS Tutorial [Video]. https://universityofalberta.instructuremedia.com/embed/78f65f32-d3be-4e71-ba2e-278702509294

University of Alberta. (2025). Get started with Gemini. https://www.ualberta.ca/en/information-services-and-technology/news/2025/get-started-with-gemini-app.html

University of Alberta. (n.d.). Using artificial intelligence at the U of A. https://www.ualberta.ca/en/artificial-intelligence/index.html

University of Alberta. (2025, January). Using AI at the U of A: Incorporating AI tools into the university’s day-to-day work should be done thoughtfully and in alignment with its core principles and commitments. The Quad. https://www.ualberta.ca/en/the-quad/2025/01/using-ai-at-ualberta.html

External resources

Favero, L., Pérez-Ortiz, J. A., Käser, T., & Oliver, N. (2024). Enhancing critical thinking in education by means of a Socratic chatbot. arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2409.05511

Google LLC. (n.d.). Tips for creating custom Gems. Gemini Apps Help. https://support.google.com/gemini/answer/15235603?hl=en&ref_topic=15236104&sjid=720863253315854100-NC

Labadze, L., Grigolia, M., & Machaidze, L. (2023). Role of AI chatbots in education: A systematic literature review. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, 20(56). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-023-00426-1

Appadoo-Ramsamy, W. (2025). ChatGPT as a socratic assistant: Developing students’ reflective and critical thinking. PUPIL: International Journal of Teaching, Education and Learning, 178–195. https://doi.org/10.20319/ictel.2025.178195