Chatbots, Adaptivity, Validation, and Hubert!

Hey Team Chatbot!

First off, I really enjoyed the design of your OER. It was simple to navigate, aesthetically pleasing, all while being a great educational resource. Previous to this week, I hadn’t had much exposure to the history of chatbots, so I appreciate your insights, examples, and references.

To get to your question, I think we’re increasingly seeing the use of chatbots online to

deal with customer service. I know both my cell phone company and investment

platforms have chatbots, to answer simple queries from clients, and they're increasingly being used in educational institutions. If institutions can harness these chatbots to reduce the human workload of dealing with simple questioning, and the typically negative experience of being put on hold and the number of customer service calls, the business perception by both clients and employees would undoubtedly improve. This may have the potential for increased business and profitability for businesses.

I think the adaptation of chatbots ties into last week’s adaptive training/learning solutions, whereby with the implementation and further refinement of adaptive learning algorithms, we’ll see chatbots be able to handle increasingly complex client queries. Putting this into an educational perspective, I’m of the position that there is a direct correlation between the development of adaptive learning solutions, chatbot complexity, and the increasing personalization of student learning through these adaptive solutions. Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS), as I’ve discovered they’re called, are always available and convenient for users.

One interesting use of chatbots is the use of the chatbot interactions for data analytics. Institutions can analyze their chatbot interactions to prioritize frequently asked questions, and in turn use these trends to improve their business interface and overall user experience.

As Chatbots become increasingly ‘intelligent’ I’m optimistic for the idea of chatbots providing increasingly personalized user feedback within computer-based training. An interesting meld of chatbot and AI is Hubert, a feedback-oriented ‘intelligent’ chatbot that helps educators validate and improve upon their lessons, in addition to collecting and synthesizing data for trend analysis.

Here’s Hubert’s basic pitch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inOY-cfnJ74

At my workplace, the same format is used in training course critiques, however are compiled from student surveys and face-to-face training debrief interviews. Using Hubert to increase efficiency of these processes would certainly facilitate the validation process! The only hesitation I have with fully adopting a feedback mechanism such as Hubert is the loss of the ‘human connection’. My staff often develop professional rapport with students to gather honest, unfiltered feedback about how training is really going...Hubert might not be able to capture these moments as candidly as F2F. Nonetheless, it’s certainly an interesting venture that I’d enjoy seeing in educational practice!

Thanks again Team Chatbot!

-Reg