Benefits and Barriers of Chatbot Use in Education Technology and the Curriculum: Summer 2023

Most articles (13; 36.11%) used an experiment to establish the validity of the used approach, while 10 articles (27.77%) used an evaluation study to validate the usefulness and usability of their approach. The remaining articles used a questionnaire (10; 27.7%) and a focus group (3; 8.22%) as their evaluation methods. A few other subjects were targeted by the educational chatbots, such as engineering (Mendez et al., 2020), religious benefits of chatbots in education education (Alobaidi et al., 2013), psychology (Hayashi, 2013), and mathematics (Rodrigo et al., 2012). 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).

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. Renowned brands such as Duolingo and Mondly are employing these AI bots creatively, enhancing learner engagement and facilitating faster comprehension of concepts.

Data extraction strategy

Additionally, it simplifies lead conversion by scheduling meetings directly into sales representatives’ calendars and offers A/B testing to optimize conversational strategies. Freshchat offers the flexibility to create various bots, each tailored to specific functions like responding to customer inquiries or updating customer information autonomously. Then, program it with the right canned responses or AI training to represent your voice and values.

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. To understand and underline the current need for research in the use of chatbots in education, we first examined the existing literature, focusing on comprehensive literature reviews. By looking at research questions in these literature reviews, we identified 21 different research topics and extracted findings accordingly.

Acts like a Learning Medium

Chatbots can potentially be a solution to such a barrier (Schmulian & Coetzee, 2019), especially by automatically supporting learning communication and interactions (Eeuwen, 2017; Garcia Brustenga et al., 2018) for even a large number of students. It is evident that chatbot technology has a significant impact on overall learning outcomes. Specifically, chatbots have demonstrated significant enhancements in learning achievement, explicit reasoning, and knowledge retention. The integration of chatbots in education offers benefits such as immediate assistance, quick access to information, enhanced learning outcomes, and improved educational experiences.

For example, KEMTbot (Ondáš et al., 2019) is a chatbot system that provides information about the department, its staff, and their offices. Other chatbots acted as intelligent tutoring systems, such as Oscar (Latham et al., 2011), used for teaching computer science topics. Moreover, other web-based chatbots such as EnglishBot (Ruan et al., 2021) help students learn a foreign language.

Motivational agents reacted to the students’ learning with various emotions, including empathy and approval. For example, students may ask the peer agent in (Janati et al., 2020) how to use a particular technology (e.g., using maps in Oracle Analytics), while the peer agent described in (Tegos et al., 2015; Tegos et al., 2020; Hayashi, 2013) scaffolded a group discussion. 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. Winkler and Söllner (2018) reviewed 80 articles to analyze recent trends in educational chatbots.

• Also, AI chatbots contribute to skills development by suggesting syntactic and grammatical corrections to enhance writing skills, providing problem-solving guidance, and facilitating group discussions and debates with real-time feedback.
• For the interaction, detailed instructions were provided via Moodle, with the aim not to measure the participants’ English learning progress, but to enable critical analysis of each AIC as future educators.
• Chatbots are either flow-based or powered by AI, concerning approaches to their designs.
• It would be unethical to use a chatbot to interact with students under false pretenses.
• While Skill Improvement and Students’ Motivation is strongly related to Learning, Efficiency of Education is strongly related to Assisting.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies have increasingly become vital in our everyday lives. Education is one of the most visible domains in which these technologies are being used. Conversational Agents (CAs) are among the most prominent AI systems for assisting teaching and learning processes. Their integration into an e-learning system can provide replies suited to each learner’s specific needs, allowing them to study at their own pace. In this paper, based on recent advancements in Natural Language Processing (NLP) and deep learning techniques, we present an experimental implementation of an educational chatbot intended to instruct secondary school learners Logo, an educational programming language.

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The authors have no financial interests or affiliations that could have influenced the design, execution, analysis, or reporting of the research. It’s important to note that some papers raise concerns about excessive reliance on AI-generated information, potentially leading to a negative impact on student’s critical thinking and problem-solving skills (Kasneci et al., 2023). For instance, if students consistently receive solutions or information effortlessly through AI assistance, they might not engage deeply in understanding the topic.

Furthermore, these chatbots facilitate flexible personalized learning, tailoring their teaching strategies to suit each student’s unique needs. Their interactive and conversational nature enhances student engagement and motivation, making learning more enjoyable and personalized. Also, AI chatbots contribute to skills development by suggesting syntactic and grammatical corrections to enhance writing skills, providing problem-solving guidance, and facilitating group discussions and debates with real-time feedback. Overall, students appreciate the capabilities of AI chatbots and find them helpful for their studies and skill development, recognizing that they complement human intelligence rather than replace it.

Cost savings achieved through chatbot-assisted tasks

Learning, teaching and assessing English will always evolve and we’re committed to being at the forefront of change. The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. The instruments were rated based on the Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) and administered using Google Forms for both groups. Where else, learning performance was assessed based on the assessment of the project, which includes report, product, presentation, and peer-to-peer assessment. Concerning the platform, chatbots can be deployed via messaging apps such as Telegram, Facebook Messenger, and Slack (Car et al., 2020), standalone web or phone applications, or integrated into smart devices such as television sets.

For instance, the chatbot presented in (Lee et al., 2020) aims to increase learning effectiveness by allowing students to ask questions related to the course materials. It turned out that most of the participants agreed that the chatbot is a valuable educational tool that facilitates real-time problem solving and provides a quick recap on course material. The study mentioned in (Mendez et al., 2020) conducted two focus groups to evaluate the efficacy of chatbot used for academic advising. While students were largely satisfied with the answers given by the chatbot, they thought it lacked personalization and the human touch of real academic advisors. Finally, the chatbot discussed by (Verleger & Pembridge, 2018) was built upon a Q&A database related to a programming course.

Finally, researchers should explore EUD tools that allow non-programmer educators to design and develop educational chatbots to facilitate the development of educational chatbots. Adopting EUD tools to build chatbots would accelerate the adoption of the technology in various fields. Six (16.66%) articles presented educational chatbots that exclusively operate on a mobile platform (e.g., phone, tablet). 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. The findings indicate other key potential areas for AIC improvement to better cater to users’ proficiency levels.

The most popular GenAI tools are text generation bots or ‘chatbots’, which are automated computer programs that you can speak to. Image generation bots, such as OpenAI’s DALL-E and Midjourney, have also received a lot of attention. At Cambridge, our experts use research to harness the power of digital advancements, like AI.

• Learn how AI chatbots are revolutionizing learning and administrative efficiency.
• At Ithaca College, we have been exploring how these new AI tools can provide insights and services in ways that were not available to us before.
• As data sources, Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar, Microsoft Academics, and the educational research database “Fachportal Pädagogik” (including ERIC) were selected, all of which incorporate all major publishers and journals.
• Teachers can totally utilize technology, filling students’ scorecards based on AI chatbot findings.
• Only four studies (Hwang & Chang, 2021; Wollny et al., 2021; Smutny & Schreiberova, 2020; Winkler & Söllner, 2018) examined the field of application.

The first question identifies the fields of the proposed educational chatbots, while the second question presents the platforms the chatbots operate on, such as web or phone-based platforms. The third question discusses the roles chatbots play when interacting with students. The fourth question sheds light on the interaction styles used in the chatbots, such as flow-based or AI-powered.