Chatbots as a Learning Tool

Journal of Applied Learning and Teaching, 2023

As the application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) continues to permeate various sectors, the educational landscape is no exception. Several AI in education (AIEd) applications, like chatbots, present an intriguing array of opportunities and challenges. This paper provides an in-depth exploration of the use and role of AI in education and research, focusing on the benefits (the good) and potential pitfalls (the bad and ugly) associated with the deployment of chatbots and other AIEDs. The opportunities explored include personalised learning, facilitation of administrative tasks, enriched research capabilities, and the provision of a platform for collaboration. These advantages are balanced against potential downsides, such as job displacement, misinformation, plagiarism, and the erosion of human connection. Ethical considerations, particularly concerning data privacy, bias reinforcement, and the digital divide, are also examined. Conclusions drawn from this analysis stress the importance of striking a balance between AI capabilities and human elements in education, as well as developing comprehensive ethical frameworks for AI deployment in educational contexts.

Computer programs known as chatbots can mimic conversations with real users. They are utilized more frequently in education to automate administrative activities, respond to student inquiries, and offer tailored learning support. An exploratory overview of the research on chatbot software and its prospective effects on the educational system is presented in this essay. The history of chatbots and how they have evolved in the education industry are covered in the first section of the study. The available chatbot software is then reviewed, along with its capabilities and effects on students and teachers. The requirement for high-quality data and the possibility of bias are some of the difficulties related with employing chatbots in education that are also covered in the paper. The future of chatbots in education is covered in the paper's conclusion. It implies that chatbots could fundamentally alter how we educate people. To completely comprehend how chatbots affect student learni...

International Journal of Engineering Pedagogy (iJEP), 2024

Chatbots are emerging technologies with the potential to improve teaching and learning processes. This paper conducts a systematic review of research on chatbots in education, focusing on articles published in Online-Journals.org from 2011 to 2024. The aim is to examine the various aspects addressed by the authors, such as design principles, pedagogical roles, interaction styles, and evaluation methods for chatbots in educational contexts. The tools were classified according to the type of user they targeted, revealing that 42% were aimed at students, 11% at teachers, 29% at both types of users, and 18% at external users. The characteristics of the tools along the above dimensions were analyzed, highlighting trends, good practices, and observed limitations. The key findings, challenges, and implications of using chatbots to improve learning outcomes, and experiences were discussed. It was concluded that chatbots are an emerging technology that offers benefits such as teaching personalization, self-learning, and real-time feedback but also poses challenges, such as evaluation and research into their effectiveness for education.

2021

The widespread use of chatbots is a reality and their application in higher education is promising. Understanding higher education users' expectations for the use of chatbots in education is important for the design and development of new solutions. The present investigation documents how higher education users envision the pedagogical uses of chatbots in higher education, and how experts in the domain of education chatbots perceive the potential benefits and challenges related to the use of chatbots in education. A qualitative inquiry was undertaken based on 22 semi-structured interviews with higher-education students and instructors, and experts from the fields of Artificial Intelligence and educational chatbots. Based on our findings, the envisioned pedagogical uses of chatbots can be categorized in terms of chronological integration into the learning process: prospective, ongoing , and retrospective. Under each one of those higher-order categories, specific learning domains can be supported (i.e., cognitive, affective), besides administrative tasks. Benefits and challenges foreseen in the use of pedagogical chatbots are presented and discussed. The findings of this study highlight the manner in which higher-education users envision the use of chatbots in education, with potential implications on the creation of specific pedagogical scenarios, accounting also for the learning context, chatbot technology, and pedagogies that are deemed appropriate in each scenario.

Academy of Management Proceedings, 2018

Chatbots are becoming a ubiquitous trend in many fields such as medicine, product and service industry, and education. Chatbots are computer programs used to conduct auditory or textual conversations. A growing body of evidence suggests that these programs have the potential to change the way students learn and search for information. Especially in large-scale learning scenarios with more than 100 students per lecturer, chatbots are able to solve the problem of individual student support. However, until now, there has been no systematic, structured overview of their use in education. The aim of this paper is therefore to conduct a systematic literature review based on a multi-perspective framework, from which we have derived initial search questions, synthesized past research, and highlighted future research directions. We reviewed titles and abstracts of 1405 articles drawn from management, education, information systems, and psychology literature before examining and individually coding a relevant subset of 80 articles. The results show that chatbots are in the very beginning of entering education. Few studies suggest the potential of chatbots for improving learning processes and outcomes. Nevertheless, past research has revealed that the effectiveness of chatbots in education is complex and depends on a variety of factors. With our literature review, we make two principal contributions: first, we structure and synthesize past research by using an input-process-output framework, and secondly, we use the framework to highlight research gaps for guiding future research in that area.

IJARW, 2024

The field of education is going through a significant change, with AI as a critical part of it and Chatbots showing up as an essential example of this progress. Chatbots are becoming valuable tools that can reshape how we learn. As we push for educational improvements, using Chatbots presents opportunities and challenges while allowing teachers and students to think about their career values. This study uses a fundamental analysis to look at research on ChatGPT in education based on data from Scopus. A total of 1.039 publications were reviewed. The main findings show a significant rise in studies on this topic in 2023 and 2024, which comprise 68.33% of all collected publications. The authors with the most work are from universities and research institutes in Switzerland and China, and some newer authors have gained a lot of citations. The top 10 articles were published in well-known and respected journals. The research covers essential topics, focusing on how Chatbots can be used in education to boost self-learning, support adaptable learning styles, and include newer machine and deep learning methods. This analysis helps give a broad view of current research on Chatbots in education, offering useful insights for researchers and teachers on new trends and future directions for this growing part of AI in learning.

2020

Chabot, a virtual teaching aid diminishing the monotonous duties of educators, is being researched and exploited in the sector of education. It has been configured in such a manner that customized learning atmosphere is generated and doubts raised by learners are cognitively responded to. This is achieved through vigorous analysis of response and the learning techniques undertaken by students. This paper assesses previous literatures published by researchers on the use of chatbots in the area of learning.

2025

Education and information technologies, 2024

The aim of this research is to investigate the educational potential of AI-powered chatbots in Social Studies learning-teaching processes. The study was conducted using embedded design, evaluated within the framework of mixed methods research. The study group consists of 78 6th-grade students studying in three different classes, along with one teacher who implemented the practices and guided the process. During the experimental phase of the study, lessons in the experimental group were taught by the practitioner teacher using an AI-powered chatbot named "Sosyalci-Bot". Meanwhile, lessons in two control groups were taught following the constructivist approach. At the end of the process, it was determined that the experimental group students' post-test and permanency test scores were significantly higher than the control group students' scores in both post-test and permanency test. In the semi-structured interviews, both students and the practitioner teacher provided positive evaluations of the pedagogical and design features of the chatbot, indicating that these features positively impacted the learning-teaching process. They also identified some shortcomings while offering suggestions for improvement. Based on the study findings, it is evident that chatbots have a high potential to contribute to Social Studies education. However, to fully harness this potential and achieve optimal effectiveness, further advancements and refinements in chatbot technology are required. At this point, it is recommended to conduct theoretical or applied studies focusing on developing chatbots with high communication capacity and explore innovative and constructive ideas regarding the integration of chatbots into educational environments.

University News, 2022

The National Education Policy, 2020 emphasizes on the need to generate awareness as well as conduct research on various aspects of the emerging disruptive technologies. Chatbots are one of the disruptive technologies which are finding its way into education. Chatbots are the software programmes which can take the form of text/voice; facial mode or robots and can act like a helping hand to the teacher. Chatbots with and without educational intentions are being used in education for various purposes. With educational intention, chatbots developed on the basis of socio-constructivist approaches of learning can be used for various purposes like providing interactive quizzes, acting like virtual tutors, programmes for exercise and practice, assessment, answering questions, delivering videos of past lectures. Chatbots developed on the basis of behaviorist and cognitivist approaches of learning are used to perform various activities which do not have educational intentions like answering the FAQs related to course, handling many repetitive questions raised by students regarding project guidelines, deliverables, deadlines, grades, etc. Chatbots in education is less explored area and acceptance of chatbots by education stakeholders and its integration and effectiveness in education need to be explored further.