A. Čižmešija, A. Horvat, D. Plantak Vukovac
University
of Zagreb, Faculty of Organization and Informatics (CROATIA)
Fostering students’ engagement in the learning process is crucial for their academic success
and can impact their achievement, course completion and skill development. This paper explores the
potential of chatbots for improving student engagement and course completion. For this purpose, we
employed a communication platform with chatbot functionalities called Differ in five courses at the
Faculty of Organization and Informatics during the summer semester of 2019/2020 academic year.
Educators that tested the platform used different strategies to engage their students in Differ,
which resulted in various amounts of student’s interactions with the educators or among the students
in the course. At the end of the semester, students received a survey in which they were asked to
evaluate their learning process and engagement using Differ. Overall, 76 students (n=76) responded
to the online survey voluntarily and anonymously. For 84,21% of respondents, usage of Differ has
improved communication with the course teachers. Among participants, Differ has been recognized as a
valuable tool for improving course performance which was confirmed by calculating Spearman’s rho
correlation coefficient. However, even though the chabot application gained positive impression
because of establishing a more approachable and informal communication channel with the course
teachers, results show lack of peer-to-peer communication habits on the Differ platform for course
activities. Future research should include more students from different universities to gain better
insight into the usage and interactions within the chatbots in education, and explore the teacher's
perspective with best practices to use the chatbots in the course
Full text article available here:
https://library.iated.org/view/CIZMESIJA2021IMP
