Exploring the pedagogical uses of AI chatbots

Chatbots can support students in finding course details quickly by connecting them to key information. This can alleviate the burden for instructional staff, as the chatbot can serve as the first line of communication regarding due dates, assignment details, homework resources, chatbot for education etc. In addition, students can get the help and information they need at any hour of the day (or night, as the case may be). The teaching team will save time not having to answer similar questions over and over again, and students will receive answers immediately.

As a rule, this advanced data collection system enhances administrative efficiency and enables institutions to use pupils’ information as necessary. Such a streamlined approach will assist learning centers in reducing manual efforts required for materials update, thereby fostering convenient resource utilization. AI chatbots for education offer backup throughout university life, from the admission process to post-course assistance. They act beyond classroom activities as campus guides, providing valuable information on facilities and helping students.

Chatbots In Education: Applications Of Chatbot Technologies

Some educational institutions are increasingly turning to AI-powered chatbots, recognizing their relevance, while others are more cautious and do not rush to adopt them in modern educational settings. Consequently, a substantial body of academic literature is dedicated to investigating the role of AI chatbots in education, their potential benefits, and threats. Most peer agent chatbots allowed students to ask for specific help on demand. Interestingly, the only peer agent that allowed for a free-style conversation was the one described in (Fryer et al., 2017), which could be helpful in the context of learning a language. Several studies have found that educational chatbots improve students’ learning experience. For instance, Okonkwo and Ade-Ibijola (2021) found out that chatbots motivate students, keep them engaged, and grant them immediate assistance, particularly online.

Education as an industry has always been heavy on the physical presence and proximity of learners and educators. Although a lot of innovative technology advancements were made, the industry wasn’t as quick to adopt until a few years back. To summarize, incorporating AI chatbots in education brings personalized learning for students and time efficiency for educators. However, concerns arise regarding the accuracy of information, fair assessment practices, and ethical considerations. Striking a balance between these advantages and concerns is crucial for responsible integration in education.

AI-powered chatbots can help automate assessment processes by accessing examination data and learner responses. These indispensable assistants generate specific scorecards and provide insights into learning gaps. Timely and structured delivery of such results aids students in understanding their progress, showing the areas for improvement. For these and other geopolitical reasons, ChatGPT is banned in countries with strict internet censorship policies, like North Korea, Iran, Syria, Russia, and China. Several nations prohibited the usage of the application due to privacy apprehensions.

Deliberate practice, such as role-playing, can help you develop these transfer skills. AI chatbots can help with developing scenarios, role-playing a situation, and providing feedback. For example, you might prompt the chatbot to create a realistic ethical dilemma that applies to the discipline or to role-play as a patient or client in a relevant scenario.

For example, if you are using a chatbot to reflect on a recent experience and to think of possible next steps, a conversational tone might yield better results. Try beginning the same way you would begin a chat conversation with a colleague or acquaintance. “She” was named by the Lansing School District but created by AllHere, a company that uses a chatbot or virtual advisor to fight chronic absenteeism by connecting families with resources and answers to questions 24/7. The chatbot’s text-based interventions are based on Dr. Peter Bergman’s research into how text messaging can increase student retention. These programs have one or a few functionalities that tackle specific problems.

Examples include Rexy (Benedetto & Cremonesi, 2019), which helps students enroll in courses, shows exam results, and gives feedback. Another example is the E-Java Chatbot (Daud et al., 2020), a virtual tutor that teaches the Java programming language. Recently, chatbots have been utilized in various fields (Ramesh et al., 2017). Most importantly, chatbots played a critical role in the education field, in which most researchers (12 articles; 33.33%) developed chatbots used to teach computer science topics (Fig. 4).

These bots offer individualized support to learners, providing guidance, and aiding in workload management for both teachers and educatee. By streamlining routine activities, chatbots help pedagogues focus on delivering high-quality knowledge and monitoring attendees’ progress. Education reaches far beyond the classroom, requiring guidance and support across the entire campus life. In this part, we will explore how AI-powered tools give a hand in learning processes, assist with homework or simplify data collection. These programs may struggle to offer innovative or creative solutions to complex problems. This limits their ability to stimulate critical thinking or problem-solving skills.

Remember to read the terms of service of the tool when deciding to access it. Some chatbots have options to opt out of sharing data which are described in the terms of service. Stretch is one of the first so-called “walled garden AI” tools trained on a limited, carefully curated pool of information to serve a specific community, in education or any area, https://chat.openai.com/ Culatta said. ISTE is still developing Stretch and hopes to give a wider group of educators a chance to use the tool soon. Eventually, Stretch may be used to help educators with research and professional development. SchoolMessenger, a communication platform for K-12 schools, has introduced a chatbot feature to facilitate parent-teacher communication.

Equally if not more importantly, it can reveal gaps in knowledge or flawed assumptions the learners hold, which can inform the design of new learning experiences — chatbot-mediated or not. Metacognitive skills can help students understand how learning works, increase awareness of gaps in their learning, and lead them to develop study techniques (Santascoy, 2021). Stanford has academic skills coaches that support students in developing metacognitive and other skills, but you might also integrate metacognitive activities into your courses with the assistance of an AI chatbot.

Personalized learning and academic support

As a result, schools can reduce the need for additional support staff, leading to cost savings. This cost-effective approach ensures that educational resources are utilized efficiently, ultimately contributing to more accessible and affordable education for all. Renowned brands such as Duolingo and Mondly are employing these AI bots creatively, enhancing learner engagement and facilitating faster comprehension of concepts. These educational chatbots play a significant role in revolutionizing the learning experience and communication within the education sector.

For instance, you can ask AtlasRTX’s higher ed digital assistants questions such as whether you need to submit SAT scores to apply, or what your minimum GPA needs to be. However, ask it what the meaning of life is and the answer you receive will likely be less satisfactory. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. Modern chatbots are trained to conduct very complex tasks, yet they can be easily built without coding. Most bots provide specific answers depending on the words and phrases people use, so the building process usually involves asking questions and generating possible outcomes. The Summit Learning project and Jill Watson are ideal examples how chatbots can bring constructive change to the learning process and make it more efficient.

• Drawing from extensive systematic literature reviews, as summarized in Table 1, AI chatbots possess the potential to profoundly influence diverse aspects of education.
• With artificial intelligence, the complete process of enrollment and admissions can be smoother and more streamlined.
• As such, we mitigated this risk by cross-checking the work done by each reviewer to ensure that no relevant article was erroneously excluded.

When it comes to education-related applications of AI, the media have paid the most attention to applications like students getting chatbots to compose their essays and term papers. This limitation was necessary to allow us to practically begin the analysis of articles, which took several months. We potentially missed other interesting articles that could be valuable for this study at the date of submission. A few other subjects were targeted by the educational chatbots, such as engineering (Mendez et al., 2020), religious education (Alobaidi et al., 2013), psychology (Hayashi, 2013), and mathematics (Rodrigo et al., 2012). With artificial intelligence, the complete process of enrollment and admissions can be smoother and more streamlined.

This can be explained by users increasingly desiring mobile applications. According to an App Annie report, users spent 120 billion dollars on application stores Footnote 8. In comparison, chatbots used to teach languages received less attention from the community (6 articles; 16.66%;). Interestingly, researchers used a variety of interactive media such as voice (Ayedoun et al., 2017; Ruan et al., 2021), video (Griol et al., 2014), and speech recognition (Ayedoun et al., 2017; Ruan et al., 2019). According to their relevance to our research questions, we evaluated the found articles using the inclusion and exclusion criteria provided in Table 3. The inclusion and exclusion criteria allowed us to reduce the number of articles unrelated to our research questions.

Conclusion – Chatbot for education

But the success stories of the University of Galway and Georgia State University, reveal the transformative potential of such models. Subsequently, we delve into the methodology, encompassing aspects such as research questions, the search process, inclusion and exclusion criteria, as well as the data extraction strategy. Moving on, we present a comprehensive analysis of the results in the subsequent section. Finally, we conclude by addressing the limitations encountered during the study and offering insights into potential future research directions.

It used Artificial Intelligence Markup Language (AIML) to identify an accurate response to user input using knowledge records (AbuShawar and Atwell, 2015). These educational chatbots are like magical helpers transforming the way schools interact with students. Now we can easily explore all kinds of activities related to our studies, thanks to these friendly AI companions by our side. This AI chatbot for higher education addresses inquiries about various aspects from the admission process to daily academic life. These range from guidance on bike parking or locating specific classrooms to offering support during times of loneliness or illness. Cara also provides insights into what’s bugging students and helps them engage with the university.

Moreover, they contribute to higher learner retention rates, thereby amplifying the success of establishments. In modern educational institutions, student feedback is the most important factor for assessing a teacher’s work. Most schools and universities have upgraded their feedback collection process by shifting from print to online forms.

The advantages and challenges of using chatbots in universities share similarities with those in primary and secondary schools, but there are some additional factors to consider, discussed below. Some studies mentioned limitations such as inadequate or insufficient dataset training, lack of user-centered design, students losing interest in the chatbot over time, and some distractions. Studies that used questionnaires as a form of evaluation assessed subjective satisfaction, perceived usefulness, and perceived usability, apart from one study that assessed perceived learning (Table 11). Assessing students’ perception of learning and usability is expected as questionnaires ultimately assess participants’ subjective opinions, and thus, they don’t objectively measure metrics such as students’ learning.

Instead of enduring the hassle of visiting the office and waiting in long queues for answers, students can simply text the chatbots to quickly resolve their queries. This user-friendly option provides convenient and efficient access to information, enhancing the overall student experience and streamlining administrative processes. Whether it’s admission-related inquiries or general questions, educational chatbots offer a seamless and time-saving alternative, empowering students with instant and accurate assistance at their fingertips.

The bots can then process this information on the instructor’s request to generate student-specific scorecards and provide learning gap insights. Chatbots for learning are AI-powered digital tools designed specifically for the educational sector. These programs use artificial intelligence and natural language processing to engage with pupils, pedagogs, or administrative staff. Their primary aim is to enhance the teaching moments, streamline tasks, and provide personalized support. As the educational landscape continues to evolve, the rise of AI-powered chatbots emerges as a promising solution to effectively address some of these issues.

AI-powered chatbots are designed to mimic human conversation using text or voice interaction, providing information in a conversational manner. Chatbots’ history dates back to the 1960s and over the decades chatbots have evolved significantly, driven by advancements in technology and the growing demand for automated communication systems. Created by Joseph Weizenbaum at Chat PG MIT in 1966, ELIZA was one of the earliest chatbot programs (Weizenbaum, 1966). ELIZA could mimic human-like responses by reflecting user inputs as questions. Another early example of a chatbot was PARRY, implemented in 1972 by psychiatrist Kenneth Colby at Stanford University (Colby, 1981). PARRY was a chatbot designed to simulate a paranoid patient with schizophrenia.

Roughly 92% of students worldwide demonstrate a desire for personalized assistance and updates concerning their academic advancement. By analyzing pupils’ learning patterns, these tools customize content and training paths. Such a unique approach ensures that everyone receives tailored support, promoting better comprehension and knowledge retention.

Also, with so many variations, there is a scope for human error in the admission process. Chatbots in the education sector can help collect feedback from all the stakeholders after each conversation or completion of every process. This can help schools in extracting useful information and attending to matters with poor results. From teachers to syllabus, admissions to hygiene, schools can collect information on all the aspects and become champions in their sector.

They possess the ability to generate text, create diverse creative content, and provide informative answers to questions, although their accuracy may not always be perfect. The key difference is that Google Bard is trained on a dataset that includes text from the internet, while ChatGPT is trained on a dataset that includes text from books and articles. This means that Google Bard is more likely to be up-to-date on current events, while ChatGPT is more likely to be accurate in its responses to factual questions (AlZubi et al., 2022; Rahaman et al., 2023; Rudolph et al., 2023).

Furthermore, they aid in conducting assessments, even in courses requiring subjective evaluations. Digital assistants address queries and exchange information regarding lectures, assignments, or events. Furthermore, institutions leveraging chatbots witness higher conversion rates, thereby contributing to overall success. The success of chatbot implementation depends on how easily educatee perceive and adapt to their use. If they find tools complex or difficult to navigate, it may hinder their acceptance and application in educational settings. Ensuring a user-friendly interface and straightforward interactions is important for everyone’s convenience.

While they can provide customized instruction, chatbots may not match human instructors’ emotional support and mentorship. Understanding the importance of human engagement and expertise in education is crucial. They offer students guidance, motivation, and emotional support—elements that AI cannot completely replicate. When interacting with students, chatbots have taken various roles such as teaching agents, peer agents, teachable agents, and motivational agents (Chhibber & Law, 2019; Baylor, 2011; Kerry et al., 2008).

This method encourages students to ask questions and actively participate in processes comfortably. As a result, it significantly increases concentration level and comprehensive understanding. These AI-driven tools create an inclusive studying environment by catering to diverse educational styles and abilities. They offer adaptable content formats, such as audio, visual, and text-based materials, ensuring accessibility for all users, regardless of their needs.

All conversations are anonymous so no data is tracked to the user and the database only logs the timestamp of each conversation. If you have questions about student data, feel free to reach out to GSE IT. Instructors can read through anonymous conversations to get a sense of how the chatbot is being utilized and the nature of inquiries coming into the chatbot. This can also be a type of temperature check for any common misunderstandings or concerns among learners. Users should provide feedback to OpenAI, Google, and other relevant creators and stakeholders regarding any concerns or issues they encounter while using chatbots. Reporting any instances of misuse or ethical violations will help to improve the system and its guidelines.

An AI chatbot might help you by giving students frequent, immediate, and adaptive feedback. For example, you might guide your students in using chatbots to get feedback on the structure of an essay or to find errors in a piece of programming code. Remember that you and your students should always critically examine feedback generated by chatbots.

There are also dozens of simpler bots and Artificial Intelligence apps, used in various schools and colleges. When we talk about educational chatbots, this is probably the biggest concern of teachers and trade union organizations. The truth is that they will take over the repetitive tasks and make a teacher’s work more meaningful. Students who attend the same class have different skills, interests, and abilities. That is why they need personal tutors, who can provide one-on-one lectures.

Each step in the flow is a chatbot-initiated action that is customizable, e.g., informing prospects about the unique qualities of your learning programs. Guided analysis of how AI can affect your own courses and teaching practice, covering ethical issues, student success issues, and workload balance. You might first use the chatbot to help you define a project and break down the work into manageable chunks, then clarify the function or routine you want to work on. You might then use the chatbot to generate examples or suggest useful methods (Gewirtz, n.d.). When prompting a chatbot, ask it “What more would you need to make this interaction better?” (Chen, 2023). This can in turn prompt you to give more specific details and instructions that can yield better results.