From primary schools to Ivy League colleges had to adopt technology in their operations when the pandemic hit us in 2020.
This ensued the digital transformation journey of many universities and educational institutes.
World Economic Forum reports that global education technology investment marked a high growth by hitting $18.66 billion. By 2025, the overall marketplace of online education is expected to reach $350 billion.
In a world where everything is virtual, it comes as no surprise that conversational AI-based education is the future and will play a key role in delivering education going forward.
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Conversational AI in education
Conversational AI chatbots allow web-based, synchronous and self-paced learning, helping educational institutions to concentrate on an individual student as well as increase the quality and outcome of their learning.
Conversational AI ensures smooth communication by enabling a natural dialogue between users and computers, a prerequisite for successful education. With natural language processing support, conversational AI recognizes students’ queries and delivers better, human-like responses to their requirements.
Conversational AI includes virtual assistance and chatbots that are now revolutionizing the educational sector.
Impact of conversational AI on education
1. Enhanced learning experience
Conversational AI chatbots can help students grasp concepts in a way that’s faster, more efficient and engaging. An educational chatbot helps students revise important concepts before exams, conduct quizzes around topics or help solve general doubts. The secret to building a successful educational chatbot is empathetic conversational design. The chatbots can be trained in a manner that facilitates students to build a connection similar to a student-teacher relationship.
2. Superior student support
Students ask questions. Students come from all across the world, which means your support staff have to be equipped with different languages. A chatbot can answer FAQs, be available 24*7 and come with multilingual capabilities. This chatbot can be trained to handle everything from admission to the convocation ceremony. It can serve as a one-stop solution for all answers.
3. Providing teaching aid
Educational institutes can build a chatbot that helps teachers create innovative teaching methods. Chatbots can help educational institutes to bridge the gap between them and teachers. A chatbot can be deployed on institutes’ internal portal that provides all necessary information to teachers. Teachers can also share learning materials with students in the form of PDFs and PPTs.
Chatbot as the back-end administrator
Let’s look at some common use-cases of an education chatbot.
1. Alerts and reminders
A chatbot in educational institutions can help students with reminders and alerts, such as reminders on assignment submission dates, exam dates, renewal of gym and library memberships. The omnichannel capabilities of the chatbot can be of immense help. To avoid miss-communication on the campus, a chatbot deployed on students’ favorite messaging channel solves this problem.
2. Exceptional student engagement
A chatbot helps universities to engage with students on a personal level. Not only do students excel academically but develop a holistic experience that shapes their personality. Deploying a chatbot that assists students in extra-curricular activities will help them focus on critical tasks and worry less about operational inefficiencies.
3. Assisting with private tutoring
A chatbot that can help you with creating hyper-personalized learning methods as per the unique needs of the student. Students can opt for private tutoring from teachers by booking appointments and clearing doubts. A well-trained and regularly updated chatbot can also accommodate missed lectures.
4. Offer a virtual campus tour
With an AI-powered chatbot, colleges can offer a virtual campus tour to interested students. The assistant serves as a virtual ‘campus tour guide’, answering students’ questions about the campus, its facilities, interesting facts and trivia and more. It’s certainly the next best thing you can offer your prospective students during the pandemic.
5. Lead generation
When students visit your website, they want to know everything about your university – right from the admission process, fees, financial aid, placement reports and so on. A FAQs chatbot can help the visitors navigate through your website, helping them get the required information faster. The chat can also help you assess the quality of leads and create marketing campaigns accordingly.
Benefits of conversational AI in education
1. AI-powered teaching assistants
Conversational bots can identify which content is more suitable for students and provide personalized learning activities. Conversational AI can also evaluate students’ learning progress, deliver personalized feedback and suggest more significant learning content.
2. Instant support
Conversational AI technology allows students to get support immediately. An AI-powered chatbot can help students gain information related to the admission process plus share vital details about the courses, modules, professors, project deadlines, event updates and more. It also gives insights about facilities, rooms, library membership process and scholarships without causing any delay.
3. Automated administrative works
Automate various administrative tasks with conversational AI. From evaluating assignments to grading reports, AI can be used to minimize manual administrative tasks.
4. Smart, safe and secure feedback
Conversational AI organizes feedback. It can collect all the feedback and highlight the common points. Student feedback provides an opportunity for the faculty to find gaps in their teaching efforts and enhance them in the future. The feedback from the professors allows students to find the areas they need to put extra effort into.
Future of conversational AI in the education sector
The future of conversational AI in the education sector is estimated to be vibrant and result-driven. Technologies like speech recognition, instant answering, automation and predictive capabilities deliver a personalized and rapidly developing education. Faculty can also plan each student’s growth in real-time with conversational AI chatbots.
There is no doubt that the pandemic has ushered in a revolution of microlearning. It provides innovative learning opportunities through small bursts of teaching materials that students can understand in a short period, based on their desired timetable as well as location.
