Abstract:

Due to their ability to imitate human conversation, the use of chatbots in the field of education is gaining popularity​. Besides their use in providing support services on campus, e.g., in the admission process, educational chatbots have increasingly been used as educational agents to support students' learning​, improve learning outcomes, and reduce teachers' workload. One promising application of educational chatbots is their increasing use as motivational agents aimed at enhancing students' engagement during learning​. However, little is known about the application of educational chatbots for self-assessment and self-reflection purposes​. Drawing on evidence that chatbots can support students' engagement in online learning environments, we developed a rule-based chatbot by using the Landbot software, which we called “digibot”. We implemented the digibot on a website hosting online courses aiming to improve digital skills for (preservice) teachers. The courses were developed by six pedagogical universities of Switzerland. While learners visit the website, digibot invites them to assess their previous experience and learning interests related to the topics on digital skills provided in these learning offers. At the end of the conversation, which is designed as an interactive questionnaire, digibot provides the learners with the results of their assessment and accordingly recommends which of the courses the learners should start with. Previous experiences and current interests are both taken into consideration for this recommendation. As previous research has shown, chatbot questionnaires may have several benefits over regular computer questionnaires, especially on a motivational level​.

This article provides details on the design and implementation of the digibot in an online learning environment and discusses the intermediate results of an evaluation study conducted with twelve learners, using a short questionnaire. The aim of the study was twofold. First, it served as an evaluation of the motivational potential of the digibot for engaging the learners on the online learning environment. Second, we aimed at evaluating the students' perceptions about the usefulness of the digibot as a self-assessment and self-reflection tool, in addition to its ability to provide better orientation when browsing through the courses on the website. Our study contributes to a better understanding of the motivational potential of educational chatbots in general and to exploring their further application areas in the field of education.

Keywords:

Chatbot, teacher education, self-assessment, self-reflection.