Students in self-financing tertiary education sector have diverse backgrounds and varying learning paths. This project aims to improve the student learning experience by helping teachers develop and utilize chatbots.

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The justifications for the project are listed as follows:

Online communication is the most preferred and utilised form of communication for young people. When communicating with a machine, students feel more secure to disclose their concerns and feelings as they are not required to show their face. Chatbot is free from the restrictions of physical space and time. It aligns perfectly with the habits of youths engaging in various activities around the clock and having services provided conveniently at the touch of a button on their smart phones (Chang et al., 2022).

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In the digital era, traditional lectures and tutorials may not be the best pedagogical practices conducive to the achievement of learning outcomes, with minimal student engagement in class.Thus, this calls for a timely, prompt teacher feedback method that can help achieve intended learning outcomes.

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While chatbots have been proven to be effective in commercial settings, a good understanding of the concepts, technologies, skills, and pre-cautions for successful implementation is required. Chatbots are becoming increasing popular as a way for businesses to improve customer engagement and automate repetitive tasks. They can provide quick and convenient answers to frequently asked questions, help customers find products or services they are looking for, and even collect customer feedback (Huang et al., 2022).

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Chatbots have been proven to be useful in adding gamification elements in class. With the help from chatbots, students are more motivated to learn due to the fun factor. Teachers could also use chatbots to track student progress (Yin et al., 2021).

The most important element in chatbot usage is the mindset of teaching staff. Some teachers might fear being replaced by machines in future. Thus, this calls for a solid understanding of artificial intelligence.​

 

The objectives of this project are as follows:

 

1. To enable the teachers to appreciate the benefits of using chatbots to complement classroom and/or online teaching.

2. To enable the teachers to develop a chatbot for their courses to complement classroom and/or online teaching.

3. To improve the student learning experience by providing instant 24-hour feedback.

4. To enable teachers to share the knowledge and experience pertaining to chatbot usage to enhance effective achievement of subject intended learning outcomes.

5. To promote chatbot usage to teachers from our institution and other self-financing tertiary education institutions by enhancing understanding of the rationale, benefits, and methods of using chatbots.

The above objectives will be achieved through a series of seminars, workshops, a website and synchronous online learning sessions. Teachers from other self-financing tertiary education institutions will be invited to join these activities so that more teachers can improve their pedagogy and practice to benefit students. Workshops will be organized to allow teachers to develop chatbots from start to finish. A portal will be set up to share materials covered in seminars and workshops to allow teachers to review relevant materials in their own time. The synchronous and asynchronous learning sessions provide teachers with hands-on experience.