Chatbot for Education: Use Cases, Benefits, Examples Freshchat

Through interactive dialogs and simulated conversations, learners can improve their speaking, listening, and comprehension skills in a low-pressure environment. Using chatbots for essay scoring and grading tasks has the potential to revolutionize the educational sector. Intelligent essay-scoring bots can reduce the workload of teachers and provide quicker feedback to students. By reminding students to repeat their learning at spaced intervals, chatbots can help cement the lesson in their minds and improve long-term retention. Drawing from extensive systematic literature reviews, as summarized in Table 1, AI chatbots possess the potential to profoundly influence diverse aspects of education. However, it is essential to address concerns regarding the irrational use of technology and the challenges that education systems encounter while striving to harness its capacity and make the best use of it.

Before AI took center stage in educational institutions, human representatives could only tackle a bunch of queries per day, only for the rest to rot in the email lists. But no more; a free chatbot for education boasts a never-ending capacity to simultaneously engage with the entire student body. One of the most significant advantages of a free chatbot for education is multilingual support — fostering inclusivity and accessibility for students from all backgrounds.

Consequently, this will be especially helpful for students with learning disabilities. Student feedback can be invaluable for improving course materials, facilities, and students’ learning experience as a whole. Educational institutions rely on having reputations of excellence, which incorporates a combination of both impressive results and good student satisfaction.

Among educators and learners, there is a notable trend—while learners are excited about chatbot integration, educators’ perceptions are particularly critical. However, this situation presents a unique opportunity, accompanied by unprecedented challenges. Consequently, it has prompted a significant surge in research, aiming to explore the impact of chatbots on education. 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.

These guided conversations can help users search for resources in more abstract ways than via a search bar and also provide a more personable and customized experience based on each user’s background and needs. Once the chatbot is developed, it must be tested thoroughly to identify and address any issues or errors. Testing can involve manual and user testing, in which students and faculty provide feedback on their experience with the chatbot. Refining the chatbot based on user feedback and data analysis can help improve its effectiveness and user satisfaction. The success of a chatbot depends on its ability to provide accurate and helpful responses to users’ inquiries.

As technology continues to evolve, we can expect even more innovative and impactful education chatbot examples in the future. Pounce answers questions about admissions, financial aid, and registration, reducing the number of students who drop out due to confusion or lack of information. Zoomers grow up on smartphones and tablets, so technology is integral to all aspects of learning, from creating and delivering course materials to how these materials are absorbed and memorized.

Deng and Yu (2023) found that chatbots had a significant and positive influence on numerous learning-related aspects but they do not significantly improve motivation among students. Contrary, Okonkwo and Ade-Ibijola (Okonkwo & Ade-Ibijola, 2021), as well as (Wollny et al., 2021) find that using chatbots increases students’ motivation. Much more than a customer service add-on, chatbots in education are revolutionizing communication channels, streamlining inquiries and personalizing the learning experience for users. For institutions already familiar with the conversational sales and support landscapes, harnessing the potential of chatbots could catapult their educational services to the next level. Here, you’ll find the benefits, use cases, design principles and best practices for chatbots in the education sector, predominantly for institutions or services focused on B2C interaction. Whether you are just beginning to consider a chatbot for education or are looking to optimize an existing one, this article is for you.

With the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), chatbots are becoming a crucial part of educational frameworks globally. By leveraging this valuable feedback, teachers can continuously improve their teaching methods, ensuring that students grasp concepts effectively and ultimately succeed in their academic pursuits. In 2023, AI chatbots are transforming the education industry with their versatile applications. Among the numerous use cases of chatbots, there are several industry-specific applications of AI chatbots in education. Institutions seeking support in any of these areas can implement chatbots and anticipate remarkable outcomes.

The personalization of chatbots for education

Thirdly education chatbots can access examination data and student responses in order to perform automated assessments. The bots can then process this information on the instructor’s request to generate student-specific scorecards and provide learning gap insights. Chatbots in education serve as valuable administrative companions for both prospective and existing students. 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.

Streamlining the learning curve for recruits, ChatInsight ensures quick, on-the-go knowledge access so you can focus on your organization’s growth and prosperity without the fear of bottlenecks and constraints. Similarly, an AI-powered chatbot can be a friendly teaching assistant, helping instructors keep tabs on student progress through automated tests, quizzes, and learning materials. They can be used to manage all the hassle-filled tasks, such as tracking attendance, grading tests, and assigning homework (or milestones). Besides the enrollment teams and instructors, several services can be streamlined with the help of chatbots. A higher-education CRM like LeadSquared can integrate with different chatbots, capture that information, and give your counseling teams a one-shot view of the student’s journey so far.

Students who used the chatbot received better grades and were more likely to pass than those who did not. In the fall of 2018, CSUN opted to test CSUNny by allowing half of all first-time freshmen access to the chatbot and measuring their success against a control group that did not use CSUNny. “There is a whole host of research suggesting that that feeling of belonging is one of the biggest predictors of retention and graduation,” she says.

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. Considering this, the University of Murcia in Spain used an AI chat assistant that successfully addressed more than 38,708 inquiries with an accuracy rate of 91%.

You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. Researchers are leveraging AI to develop systems to measure student engagement and comprehension during lessons. This capability allows for the collection of precise feedback on the effectiveness of teaching methods and materials, enabling continuous improvement in educational content and delivery. A chatbot might analyze students’ textual responses in a post-lecture feedback form to determine if the content was clear or if students are struggling with specific topics. Immediate feedback allows educators to adjust their teaching strategies promptly, ensuring that students understand the material and feel supported in their learning journey.

All conversations are anonymous so no data is tracked to the user and the database only logs the timestamp of each conversation. Educational services change regularly, and inaccuracies could lead to issues with students or potential learners. The versatility of chatbots allows for a range of applications in educational services. Adeel Akram, Senior Account Executive for respond.io, highlights the prominent use cases he encountered in the education field. Understanding why chatbots are critical in an educational context is the first step in realizing their value proposition.

For instance, if trainees were absent, the bot could send notes of lectures or essential reminders, to keep them informed while they’re not present. This efficiency contributes to a more enriching learning experience, consequently attracting more students. Education reaches far beyond the classroom, requiring guidance and support across the entire campus life.

It is very important that they understand from the beginning that they are not chatting with a human. At the same time, they should also be told who is the teacher who has designed the chatbot and, most importantly, that the information they share with the chatbot will be seen by the teacher. Depending on the activity and the goals, I often design the bot to ask students for a code name instead of their real name (the chatbot refers to the person by that name at different points in the conversation). I’m also very clear, through what the bot says to the user and what I say when I first introduce the bot, about how the information that is shared will be used. Oftentimes reflections that students share with the bot are shared with the class without identifiable information, as a starting point for social learning. Tutoring, which focuses on skill-building in small groups or one-on-one settings, can benefit learning (Kraft, Schueler, Loeb, & Robinson, 2021).

Your bot, the d.bot, is a certain type of bot: a scripted bot. Describe what it does and where/how it’s being used.

Educators and researchers must continue to explore the potential benefits and limitations of this technology to fully realize its potential. The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots in education has the potential to revolutionize how students learn and interact with information. One significant advantage of AI chatbots in education is their ability to provide personalized and engaging learning experiences. By tailoring their interactions to individual students’ needs and preferences, chatbots offer customized feedback and instructional support, ultimately enhancing student engagement and information retention. However, there are potential difficulties in fully replicating the human educator experience with chatbots. While they can provide customized instruction, chatbots may not match human instructors’ emotional support and mentorship.

Such interactions can also be used to refine your pricing structures to the affordability of the masses or create low-cost alternatives. Through generative AI, these AI chatbots power human-like, valuable interactions while maintaining quality, ensuring that students face no delays while searching for help or resources. This capability is a catch in today’s education settings, where personalized access often becomes a far-fetched thought due to large class sizes. Adept at Natural Language Processing (NLP), an AI chatbot for education, helps comprehend and access student responses, which, in turn, helps it offer personalized guidance and feedback. Plus, unlike some professors, this learning method won’t be too fast or slow for your style but will be tailored according to your learning pace and preferences. Education bots are AI-powered tools integrated into educational platforms, where they act as virtual guides and round-the-clock facilitators in all your learning processes.

While many different chatbots and LLMs exist, we choose to highlight four prominent chatbots currently available for free. Each has some unique characteristics and nuanced differences in how developers built and trained them, though these differences are not significant for our purposes as educators. We encourage you to try accessing these chatbots as you explore their capabilities. SchoolMessenger, a communication platform for K-12 schools, has introduced a chatbot feature to facilitate parent-teacher communication.

By automating routine tasks and inquiries, institutions can allocate resources to more complex issues and support students and faculty more effectively. These chatbots are also faster to build and easier to be integrated with other education applications. Finally, you can gather students’ preferences and crucial data with ease using university chatbots. Analyze which questions they ask the most, and collect their feedback about your chosen online course platform, lesson reviews, and general impressions about your classes. When it comes to the educational sector, the integration of chatbots has proved to be a groundbreaking force, changing the learning and engagement methods for good. They have become a must-have for educators since they help lift the administrative burden and promote an interactive learning environment.

Streamlining admission processes

Finally, we conclude by addressing the limitations encountered during the study and offering insights into potential future research directions. By asking or responding to a set of questions, the students can learn through repetition as well as accompanying explanations. The chatbot will not tire as students use it repeatedly, and is available as a practice partner at any time of day or night. This affords learners agency to learn at their own pace and through their own content focus. Additionally, chatbots can adapt and modify over time to shape to the learner’s pathway. In the context of chatbots for education, effectiveness is commonly measured by the reduction in response times, improvement in student satisfaction scores and the volume of successfully resolved queries.

By analyzing conversation data, educational institutions can gain insights into user preferences, pain points, and popular inquiries, informing decision-making and strategy. For education services looking to expand their reach and enrollments, chatbots are effective lead generators. By handling inquiries and routing promising leads to human reps, chatbots streamline the admissions process and boost conversion rates. In this article, we will discuss a higher education chatbot, how AI chatbots improve student and faculty support, some use cases of higher education chatbots, and the best chatbots for higher education. The main question here is whether you need to treat potential students as customers in your education chatbot messages before they enroll.

They manage thousands of student interactions simultaneously without any drop in performance. During peak times, such as the beginning of the school year or during exams, their capability to provide information at scale outperforms any human. For instance, during enrollment periods, chatbots can manage thousands of inquiries about deadlines, requirements, and procedures, reducing the workload on human staff and speeding up response times. Process automation significantly enhances operational efficiency, improving the overall student experience by providing quicker and more accurate information.

Chatbots can collect student feedback and other helpful data, which can be analyzed and used to inform plans for improvement. For instance, if students consistently receive solutions or information effortlessly through AI assistance, they might not engage deeply in understanding the topic. 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.

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. Additionally, tutoring chatbots provide personalized learning experiences, attracting more applicants to educational institutions. 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.

Incorporating AI chatbots in education offers several key advantages from students’ perspectives. AI-powered chatbots provide valuable homework and study assistance by offering detailed feedback on assignments, guiding students through complex problems, and providing step-by-step solutions. They also act as study companions, offering explanations and clarifications on various subjects. They can be used for self-quizzing to reinforce knowledge and prepare for exams. Furthermore, these chatbots facilitate flexible personalized learning, tailoring their teaching strategies to suit each student’s unique needs.

• The process of organizing your knowledge, teaching it to someone, and responding to that person reinforces your own learning on that topic (Carey, 2015).
• With 2.79 million students enrolled in online colleges and universities, hundreds of regular course queries are a part of the equation.
• They can answer common questions, provide personalized guidance, and perform administrative tasks.
• The app was created by the Polish inventor Piotr Wozniak and promoted by the SuperMemo company.
• Considering that messaging apps have already remodeled the education industry’s communication standards, chatbots are not a new on the block either.

Involving AI assistants in administrative tasks raises the overall efficiency of educational institutions, reducing wait times for students. This efficiency contributes to higher satisfaction levels among educatee Chat GPT and staff, positively impacting the institution’s credibility. Duolingo, a popular language learning app, has integrated chatbots to help users practice conversational skills in various languages.

However, providing frequent quality feedback requires much time and effort from you and your teaching team. 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. As you begin to explore, think about what you already know and the opinions you may already hold about the educational aspects of AI chatbots. This metacognitive exercise can help you identify what you want to explore and what you already understand.

Choose the right platform

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. A chatbot for education is a specialized type of artificial intelligence (AI) software designed to simulate conversation with users, providing them with automated responses to their inquiries. In the context of the education sector, these chatbots are tailored to meet the specific needs of students, educators, and administrative staff. Chatbots can assist student support services teams by providing instant responses to frequently asked questions.

Chatbots serve as valuable assistants, optimizing resource allocation in educational institutions. By efficiently handling repetitive tasks, they liberate valuable time for teachers and staff. As a result, schools can reduce the need for additional support staff, leading to cost savings.

A strategic plan is essential to organize and present this data through the chatbot without overwhelming the user. We have extensive information on chatbot-related topics, such as how to automate contact information collection and how to maximize customer service potential. Regardless of subject matter, the act of reading and memorizing can sometimes lull even the most dedicated students.

So, many e-learning platforms are using chatbots to instantly share students’ course-related doubts and queries with their respected teachers and resolve the problems at the earliest. This way students get a free environment to come forward and get a clearer view. So, it is better to design and prioritize the chatbot for education accordingly. Including friendly conversations and entering, related questions will help receive better feedback and work for the desired results. Add more flows, elements, images, GIFs, audio recordings, and other files to make your students’ chatbot for education experience more captivating and answer as many of their questions as possible.

This is possible through data analysis and natural language processing, which allow chatbots to tailor their responses to specific users. AI chatbots are becoming increasingly popular in educational institutions as they offer several benefits that can significantly improve student and faculty support. With active listening skills, Juji chatbots can help educational organizations engage with their audience (e.g., existing or prospect students) 24×7, answering questions and providing just-in-time assistance. Being an educator, it is crucial to analyze your students’ sentiments and work to solve all their issues. Educational chatbots help in better understanding student sentiments through regular interaction and feedback.

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. Today, many teachers are solely education chatbot examples focused on memorizing lessons and grading tests. By taking over these tasks, chatbots will allow teachers to concentrate on establishing a stronger relationship with students. They will have the opportunity to provide them with personal guidance and enhance the curriculum with their own research interests.

Because of the power of AI tech, many people (in many industries) are afraid they might be replaced. Consider the case of a college professor who developed a chatbot to assist students before, during and outside of his class. The chatbot provided feedback on presentations, access to a bibliography and examples used during lessons and information and notifications about classes.

Educators can improve their pedagogy by leveraging AI chatbots to augment their instruction and offer personalized support to students. By customizing educational content and generating prompts for open-ended questions aligned with specific learning objectives, teachers can cater to individual student needs and enhance the learning experience. Additionally, educators can use AI chatbots to create tailored learning materials and activities to accommodate students’ unique interests and learning styles. Addressing these gaps in the existing literature would significantly benefit the field of education.

Most schools and universities have upgraded their feedback collection process by shifting from print to online forms. While chatting with bots, students will have the chance to explain their claims. On the other hand, the bot can be trained to ask additional questions based on their previous answers. The implications of the research findings for policymakers and researchers are extensive, shaping the future integration of chatbots in education. The findings emphasize the need to establish guidelines and regulations ensuring the ethical development and deployment of AI chatbots in education.

Through this comprehensive support, chatbots help create a more inclusive and supportive educational environment, benefiting students, educators, and educational institutions alike. From handling enrollment queries to scheduling classes, educational chatbots can automate many administrative tasks, allowing staff to focus on more critical tasks that require human intervention. Through interactive conversations, thought-provoking questions, and the delivery of intriguing information, chatbots in education captivate students’ attention, making learning an exciting and rewarding adventure. By creating a sense of connection and personalized interaction, these AI chatbots forge stronger bonds between students and their studies.

AI chatbots equipped with sentiment analysis capabilities can play a pivotal role in assisting teachers. By comprehending student sentiments, these chatbots help educators modify and enhance their teaching practices, creating better learning experiences. Promptly addressing students’ doubts and concerns, chatbots enable teachers to provide immediate clarifications, fostering a more conducive and effective learning environment.

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. I borrowed the term “proudly artificial” from Lauren Kunze, the CEO of the chatbot platform Pandorabots. It would be unethical to use a chatbot to interact with students under false pretenses.

You can combine the power of chatbots with a Higher Education CRM (Customer Relationship Management) that can set up robust automations to nudge a student to complete their applications. It is important for the student to know their instructors or the realities of how easy or difficult a course is. You can set up sessions with current student ambassadors to answer any queries like this. Before the student decides to apply for a course, parents and the student would like to know more about the campus facilities as well as the kind of exposure their child can get.

Alex retains and performs better in the concepts taught through graphs and visuals, while Maya prefers hands-on learning. In this case, the AI chatbot will understand their unique preferences and provide resources tailored to their unique styles. An integrated chatbot and CRM, enables automated follow-ups for incoming inquiries. The CRM can trigger personalized messages, reminders, and notifications to prospective students at various stages of the admissions process. This automated follow-up reduces manual efforts, and increases the chances of conversion. There’s one thing that professors find more time consuming than prepping for the next class—grading tests.

• Chatbots in education create interactive learning sessions that can engage students more deeply.
• And although the chatbot might be communicating at scale, for a student it feels like the chatbot is especially there to help him move along the admissions journey.
• This, in turn, allows teachers to devote more time and attention to designing exciting lessons and providing learners with the personalized attention they deserve.
• If you are ready to explore chatbots’ potential in the education sector, consider trying respond.io, a platform that revolutionizes customer communication.
• But during the COVID-19 pandemic, edtech became a true lifeline for education by making it accessible and easy to use despite there being numerous physical restrictions.

You might then use the chatbot to generate examples or suggest useful methods (Gewirtz, n.d.). ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, uses the Generative Pre-training Transformer https://chat.openai.com/ (GPT) large language model. As of July 2023, it is free to those who sign up for an account using an email address, Google, Microsoft, or Apple account.

In contrast, NLP chatbots, which use Artificial Intelligence, make sense of what the person writes and respond accordingly (NLP stands for Natural Language Processing). Based on my initial explorations of the current capabilities and limitations of both types of chatbots, I opted for scripted chatbots. The more context, details, and nuances you give the chatbot the more it has to work with to generate responses. For example, instead of asking „How do I write a course syllabus?”, you might instead say “I am a university instructor developing a new introductory course on genetics. Can you assist me in developing a useful and clear syllabus for first-year students? Bing Chat, an AI chatbot developed by Microsoft, also uses the GPT large language model.

Erin Brereton has written about technology, business and other topics for more than 50 magazines, newspapers and online publications. Before publishing your first chatbot, there are some tips and tricks that you should be aware of. This could be invaluable help with the so-called summer melt – the motivation of students who’ve been admitted to college waning over the summer. It’s true as student sentiments prove to be most valuable when it comes to reviewing and upgrading your courses.

For example, we created a welcome series consisting of two messages, including an FAQ section to the first message and adding the “Talk to a human” button to the second one. Next, we dragged and dropped the “Action” element and connected it to the button, which will allow a human manager to take over the conversation whenever a student requests it. Another golden chatbot for eLearning rule you can see in action here is outlining what your chatbot can and cannot do in your welcome message to build proper expectations and avoid misunderstandings.

They can guide you through the process of deploying an educational chatbot and using it to its full potential. An educational chatbot is an AI-driven virtual assistant designed to help educational institutions interact more effectively with students and staff. It supports a range of activities including student instruction, administration, admissions, and even personalized tutoring, helping to streamline operations and enhance the learning experience. Institutional staff, especially teachers, are often overburdened and exhausted, working beyond their office hours just to deliver excellent learning experiences to their students.

At Kommunicate, we are envisioning a world-beating customer support solution to empower the new era of customer support. We would love to have you on board to have a first-hand experience of Kommunicate. Naveen is an accomplished senior content writer with a flair for crafting compelling and engaging content. With over 8 years of experience in the field, he has honed his skills in creating high-quality content across various industries and platforms. Top brands like Duolingo and Mongoose harmony are creatively using these AI bots to help learners engage and get concepts faster. You can explore more about the process of creating bots and find out how to build any chatbot with our visual builder.

AI chatbots in education can help engage with prospective students by focusing on intent and engagement. This is true right from the point of admission and is accomplished by personalizing their learning and gathering important feedback and other data to improve services further. Chatbots can provide academic support to students, such as answering questions on coursework, providing resources for research and study, and offering feedback on assignments. Chatbots can also assist with scheduling tutoring sessions or connecting students with academic advisors. AI chatbots can provide personalized feedback and suggestions to students on their academic performance, giving them insights into areas they need to improve.