A chatbot is a buzzword that every business, organization, small enterprise, etc has adopted currently. A Chatbot can schedule meetings, tell you the weather, and provide customer support. In short, Chatbot can be used in many ways and that’s just the beginning!
Want to order pizza, schedule a meeting, or even want a suggestion for the best product that suits your conditions at any online shopping platform- there’s Chatbot at the rescue! We can say that now we’re moving into the age of Chatbots.
Chatbots make life even easier for consumers. With Chatbots, there are no more long waits on hold to talk to a person on the phone or going through multiple steps to research and complete a purchase on websites. Millions of people and organizations have already enabled the use of Chatbot. They’re using Chatbots to contact retailers, get recommendations, complete purchases, so on and so forth. The adoption of Chatbot is increasing day by day, not just for the use but people are discovering the benefits of it.
It is good news for entrepreneurs and businesses because pretty much any website or app can be turned into a bot. But now Chatbots can be a Game Changer for Educational Mobile Apps too! The educational sector has undergone massive changes regarding internet services in learning.
It has completely changed the way students of all ages study, and the overall landscape of education has evolved for good.
Due to this pandemic situation which is ruling the world, everything has shifted to Digital Mode or Online Mode. Apart from online shopping platforms even schools recommend online educational mobile app these days to reinforce and supplement in-class lectures.
Research suggests that the size of educational mobile apps is going to rise by a CAGR of more than 27% by 2022, which marks it as one of the fastest-growing segments in mobile apps.
Many educational mobile apps such as Udemy, Coursera, etc have primarily gained an audience. Even the home-grown app like Byju have also witnessed exemplary growth in the last five years and is turning out to be the primary source of learning outside classes for all kinds of courses.
Let’s compare the Gaps in Educational Apps and Chatbot Offerings
1. Method of Teaching — If any student has any doubt, teachers can solve doubts by giving interesting examples. Some others make learning extraordinarily interactive and fun.
On the other hand, over here the Chatbot utilizes its intelligent system to suggest- Would you like to refer courses from other faculty? Do you have any doubts? The student can have a better learning experience than it would have had earlier. If the student is not satisfied with the resolution, Chatbot connects him to a manual expert again.
2. Teacher-Student Engagement — When a student is faced with any doubt they can engage themselves during the session with respective teachers.
Over here, the student types the same in the Chatbot that is present in the training window. The Chatbot utilizes it’s expansive knowledge in this context to answer and also suggests additional training to further brush up on the concepts. Without having to use Google frequently, Chatbot solves any queries in a minute — this is an amazing method to retain student attention and strengthen their learning with zero confusion.
3. Feedback — Research suggests that feedbacks help reinforce a person’s mind-map. A student can have positive as well as negative feedback. Examinations are the traditional feedback mechanism; in the case of app-based learning, they are online assessments.
Quality of content in training may be excellent, but it can never replace that component of personal approval that a learner seeks to reinforce their mind-map.
Chatbots are an artificial intelligence-based solution that relies on natural language processing and to address certain aspects that existing mobile apps are missing. The best thing about Chatbots in present times is their usage without having to call or visit a branch.
Chatbot uses the Robotic Process Automation methodology in placement with natural language processing to provide a better customer experience while also gathering useful insights for the provider.
If we come to the education sector where a real-life human teacher imparts its learnings to students through innovative methods and further reinforces it by asking and answering questions, a Chatbot might work like magic.
4. Overall View: A trainer uploads a video of the respective lecture to explain a concept. The difference comes when a student is faced with a doubt that they cannot ask anyone online. The Chatbot window pops up and asks — what do you want to learn? The AI-based tool has already recorded the current context to answer the question.
This tool has trained on this particular topic through training data-sets and has most likely developed a good understanding.
Benefits Of Chatbot In Educational Mobile Apps
1. Answering questions that a child may not be able to ask in a classroom setting due to shyness.
2. Slow learners can attend the same training multiple times that helps solve doubts and confusion.
3. Students can rely on the Chatbot to seek answers that may not have been addressed by their teachers.
4. Students who have a habit of asking too many questions can easily chat with the Chatbot. Customization of Chatbots will enhance the comfort level and engagement of the student at every age.
5. A Chatbot can turn to be a personal counsellor to children at a crucial stage that may decide how they may develop their careers.
6. And many more…
Things You Need to Take Care
1.The Chatbot should not slow down the overall system. Integrating a Chatbot into the existing system should be seamless, so it does not lead to other performance issues in the system.
2. Training and language model should be robust and extensive. A poorly trained system is even worse for a student than no chat support. Reason being that it may confuse children or portray the entire app as flawed and inefficient.
3. Security has to be taken care of at all times. Chatbots should be impelled against misuse by hackers since they are directly deriving information from the core database to learn from every experience. The Chatbot should be able to identify a malicious user and also notify the security team when any misuse happens.
Final Thoughts
As the Educational Mobile apps have just reached a moderate level of satisfaction and learnings, Chatbot may satisfy from moderate to the full level of satisfaction.
Many remote villages across India rely on online education to learn. The introduction of Chatbot needs to be such that it percolates to every level of users.
With time and increased penetration, businesses are bound to uncover further innovative ways to enhance the educational experience and make a social difference that they are capable of.