Chatbotsin Education

Vantaa, May 16th, 2019

• Innovation Unit Coordinator and lecturer at

Madrid Open University (UDIMA).

• My research and teaching focus on

the intersections of digital media and

society, with a special focus on innovation

and emerging technologies (mobile,

adaptative learning, wearable, smart

technologies...).

• I participate in national and international

projects, such as: AGE 50+, SOLA, EPBE,

CVTube, RefuSkills, GoMobile, INTRO 4.0,

B-SAFE.

Silvia Prieto Preboste

UDIMA, Spain

INFORMATION:

• 25,000 students per year

• 6,800 people in the CEF.- /

UDIMA Alumni Association

• More than 3,500 job offers

from the Job Bank

• 800 teachers and collaboratos

UDIMA is a CEF.- Business School project: The business school and the State Examinations center

have more than 40 years of experience

UDIMA presentation and academic offer

Marak Digital Marketing is a digital

advertising agency that specializes in

online promotion, marketing,

and emerging technologies.

They develop and implement

comprehensive online marketing

strategies to help their clients

to connect with the target audience.

Website: http://www.marak.es/en/

Marak Digital Marketing

Chatbots are computer programs that are able to interact

with people using language-based interfaces.

Searching for information, processing it and adapting it to

the user’s needs; answering an email following voice orders;

making a booking at a restaurant, or simply holding a

conversation are some examples of the types of interaction

that can occur between a person and a chatbot.

What is a Chatbot?

History of Chatbots

1972Parry

2001SmarterChild

2015Alexa

2017Woebot

1966Eliza

1981Jabberwacky

2013

Mobile CoachChatbots!

2016

Bots forMessenger

2010SIRI

1991Dr. Sbaitso

1950The Turing Test

1995A.L.I.C.E

2006IBM Watson

Conversational artificial intelligence,

the basic source of chatbots, thanks to which all management and natural

language processing (NLP) occurs. The first chatbots focused on the

interpretation and recognition of patterns and rules. The more advanced

chatbots implement deep learning processes to analyse the human input,

learn from conversations and generate as suitable a response as possible.

User interface (UI),

whereby the user can see or

hear the conversations with the

chatbot.

Conversational design,

which allows an artificial

interaction to be equipped with

human logic.

Elements of a chatbot

User experience (UX),

which allows a natural, intelligent

and coherent conversation to be

established.

(Nieves, 2018)

Types of chatbot

The interaction occurs through text inputs and outputs or voice inputs and outputs. With natural

language processing, written text can become oral and vice versa, which opens up communicative

possibilities in the interaction between person and chatbot (Clark, 2018).

E M BO DIE D CO N VE RS AT IONAL AGE N TS

The interface is represented by the shape of a body, or a face in the form of an avatar, which

interacts with the user and which may contain audio, text and other audiovisual and multimedia

representation resources (Allison, 2011).

PHYS I C A LThere is a third type of chatbot that is in the form of a physical robot, be it humanoid or otherwise.

B A S E D I N C HA T T E RB OX ES

Chatbot development platforms

IBM offers the Watson conversation service for language processing, which provides the creation of chatbots and virtual agents. It also has specific services for developing a number of conversation functions, such as speech to text and text to speech.

Microsoft has developed the Azure cloud services platform, which includes different AI and NLP tools to aidchatbot development. It also offers natural language services (language understanding intelligent service orLUIS) that process and analyse language (Yan et al., 2016).

Google offers TensorFlow, open software that provides materials and resources for developers. Google also has Cloud AI, a system for using or creating deep learning models. Finally, we have the Cloud Natural Languageapplication programming interface, focused on natural language processing and comprehension.

Amazon offers tools such as Lex, which enables developers to integrate chatbots in other mobile apps. Alexa is a cloud-based voice service especially designed for the Amazon Echo device.

Facebook is one of the main platforms where chatbots can work (Messenger and WhatsApp), buit it also offerswit.ai, desisgned for developers to create chatbots.

Other technologies for developers that enable the creation of chatbots are: Motion, Smooch, Gupshup, Botkit, Rasa (Futurizable, 2017), api.ai, Semantic Machines, Digital Genius, Chatfuel, Pypestream, Pandorabots, AgenBot, ChetterBot and ChatSript (Davydova, 2017).

Source: García et al. (2018)

Instant messaging apps that integrate chatbots

Messenger Facebook, Telegram, Slack, Skype, Twitter, Kik,

WeChat, Line, Viber, Snapchat and WhatsApp.

Main operational

virtual agents

Platforms

Source: García et al. (2018)

Siri (Apple)

Bixby (Samsung)

Google Assistant

(Google)

Cortana (Microsoft)

Types of chatbots in education I

Without educational intentionality:

these are chatbots that are

incorporated into teaching tasks of

an administrative nature (student

guidance and personal assistance)

and of a support nature (to answer

FAQs).

Depending on their nature

With educational intentionality:

these are designed to foster teaching

and learning directly.

Types of chatbots in education II

Administrative and management

tasks to foster personal productivity

Taking car of FAQs

Student mentoring

Depending on the functions carried out by chatbots:

Motivation

Practice of specific skills

and habilities

Simulations

Reflection and metacognitive

strategies

Student learning assessment

Types of chatbots in education III

Along the learning journey

Mentor

bots

Wellbeing

bots

Onboarding

bots

Learner

support bots

Invisible

LMS bots

Assessment

botsPractice

bots

Learner

engagement bots

Learner

engagement

Content

creationLearner

support

Content

curation

Adaptative

learning

Assessment

Wellbeing

Source: Clark, 2018

Examples of chatbots in educationAccording to intentionality

Without educational intentionality With educational intentionality

Academic guidance

and personal agent

Support

(FAQs)Tutors-support

Exercise

and practice

According

to tasks

Genie, Hubert, Ivy,

Pounce, CourseQ,

Differ, MOOCBuddy

Administrative and ma-

nagement tasks to foster

personal productivity

Genie, Ivy, Pounce,

Otto

Genie

Answering administrative

queries (FAQs)Genie, Ivy, Pounce,

CourseQ, Bot CEU

Cardenal, Herrera

Genie, Pounce, Jill

Watson, Bot CEU

Cardenal, Herrera

Mentoring Jill Watson Pounce, Jill Watson,

Differ, Ani, Botter

Duolingo, Pepper,

NAO

DuolingoConversations for

language learning

Motivation Differ, Ani, Botter Duolingo

Reflection and metacog-

nitive strategies

The Guardian of History

Replika

Student learning

assessmentThe Guardian of History

Replika

Pepper NAO

So

urc

e: G

arc

ía e

t a

l. (

20

18

)

Questions that should be

taken into account:

Considerations regarding designand configuration

Level of

'wisdom‘

of the

chatbot

Degree of

proactivity

Level of

'humanness' of

the chatbot and

its relationship

with the

student

Degree of

anthropomorphism

that the teaching

agent

61%

39%

Female Male

Master's Degree

in Educational Technology

Subject: Innovations in e-learning

(6 ECTS)

83 students

Research sample

PHASE 1

Design and programming

of the chatbot

PHASE 3

Peer assessment of the

MOOC’s proposals

PHASE 5

Assessment

by the teacher

PHASE 2

Design of

the MOOC

PHASE 4

Upload files to the

Virtual Classroom

SURVEY

Start of the

learning activity

with the students

Development of the learning activity

Big Data Analytics SEO/SE

Welcome to Marak Digital Marketing

Now let me show you some

of our services.

1. Question script design

We design the script of

questions, the transitions

between them and the types of

answers allowed.

Some examples of questions are:

• What is the title of your

MOOC?

• What is the MOOC about and

how would you describe it to

promote it?

The system also offers

information and clues to answer

the questions.

2. Peer assessment design

MoocBot is programmed to be

an assistant in the design of a

MOOC and also to assist in the

evaluation of the proposal of

another student’s MOOC.

The assessment assistant

includes questions such as:

• Are the different elements of

the MOOC exposed in a

clear and concise way?

• Do you think there is

coherence between the

different elements of the

proposal?

3. Programming the chatbot

The chatbot, called MoocBot, is

programmed and integrated into

the social network Facebook.

Test and check:

• Technical aspects.

• Transition between questions.

• Script.

The students can restart the

chatbot writing "Restart MOOC“

or "Restart assessment“.

Design and programming of the chatbot

https://www.facebook.com/UdimaMoocBot/

Design of the MOOC

The students accessed the MoocBot again to assess the

proposal made by another of their classmates.

MoocBot asked several questions to each student, such as:

• Does the MOOC include all the mandatory elements?

• Are the elements exposed in a clear and concise way?

• Is there coherence between the elements?

• What is the level of creativity and innovation of the

MOOC?

• Rating (1 to 10).

Peer assessment of the MOOC’s proposals

MOOC proposals were assessed by the teacher

according to the following criteria:

• Full MOOC design.

• Creativity in the selected topic and use of

multimedia elements.

• Coherence between the different elements of

the MOOC proposal.

• Clarity, coherence, originality, and innovation

in ideas.

• Applicability and viability of the proposal.

• Assessment of another classmate proposal.Assessment

of another

MOOC

proposal

MOOC

designed

Upload files to the Virtual Classroomand assessment by the teacher

The chatbot is a

good tool to carry

out a peer to peer

evaluation

The chatbot is a

good tool to

design a MOOC

Using the

MoocBot has

really helped you

to design the

MOOC

Totally agree

Agree

Neither agree nor disagree

Disagree

Totally disagree

Survey results

Totally agree

Agree

Neither agree no

disagree

Disagree

Totally disagree

The

interaction

with the

chatbot has

been easy for

you

The chatbot is

very useful in

the

educational

scope

The technical

level of

difficulty of

using a

chatbot is very

high

Survey results

What is your

level of

motivation

using the

chatbot?

What is your

overall rating

of the activity?

Very positive

Positive

Neither positive nor

negative

Negative

Very negative

Lot of motivation

Quite motivation

Neither motivation nor

unmotivation

Quite unmotivation

Very unmotivation

Survey results

Workshop

1 Before you build

your bot

2 Setup Welcome

Message

4 Creating

blocks

5

3 Setup Default

Replay 6

Elements

Setup

Keywords

Thanks for your attention