Reflection

Reflection:

This assignment and my participation in the venture forum have provoked much reflection.

Recently through my experiences as a MET student and a teacher, I have seen a need for custom training to make chatbot use in education easy for teachers to design and implement. The inspiration for this venture stemmed from my classmates, many of whom are educators. Anecdotally many said they would love to have a chatbot but don’t have the knowledge or time to be able to program one. I as well shared this sentiment.

Below are some considerations that resulted from cohort review and feedback.

Strengths:

Rather than concentrating on the chatbot itself, I decided to focus on the training and implementation aspect, which is vital to the viability of any venture, however, is often overlooked. Once I had identified the pain point and I had a clear focus for my venture, my passion for this idea really grew, as I believe that if this technology could help me, then it could help many other teachers and students too.

Some peer feedback on the strengths of my venture includes the venture opportunities section, where I recognized the threat of imitation and offered the solution of penetrating the market quickly. My peers also appreciated the DIY aspect and that this venture empowers teachers to learn and understand the technologies they are using, and how they are built.

Room for improvement:

Further research and tweaking are required for my evaluation section. I could have done a better job of describing where the numbers for the evaluation came from. While I did provide one sample training schedule, more samples would have been helpful. I could also better clarify what the training looks likes. Being customizable, I should have said up to eight hours of training provided, and better define “ready to use” in the sense that the company would have the training plan based on the school division's size and needs. I thought about including more details about competitors but didn't feel that they offered the same services, therefore, I felt it wouldn't be fair to compare. Adding a lower tier with fewer than 500 creators should be considered for the pricing table, at least initially.

I didn’t want to repeat what was I already said in my A2, however, I should have included a link to all the educational benefits of chatbots, made a summary page, or made a note stating that it was assumed this investor audience was already well aware of the affordances of chatbots in education. Adding a summary or “closing arguments” that reiterate the aim at the end of my venture pitch is another edit I would make. I did mention, however, should make clearer, that this venture is better suited for older students. Marketing to teachers as well as school divisions would likely be a wise addition to the marketing plan. As would be conducting more research on the number of educational settings that currently use chatbots and include these findings in my pitch.