Since the proliferation of Internet services in education, the education sector has undergone tremendous changes.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that they have completely changed the way students of all ages learn and the overall landscape of education has definitely evolved.
With the advent of educational app development companies, there are many online educational mobile apps for readers of every age. Schools also offer an online educational mobile app these days to reinforce and complement in-classroom sessions.
Research predicts that the size of educational mobile applications will grow at a CAGR of over 27% through 2022, marking it as one of the fastest growing mobile application segments.
Home-grown apps like StuDocu and Byju have also witnessed exemplary growth over the past five years and are becoming the go-to source of out-of-class learning for all types of courses.
1. 360-degree view of the overall theme — Teachers who lose sight of their teaching goals often leave students confused.
As a person learns, they develop a mind map of a concept. When the mind map is incomplete, learning is fraught with confusion.
2. Form of teaching — Some teachers have a habit of giving interesting examples to teach. Some make learning extraordinarily interactive and fun.
3. Engagement — When students are engaged during a session, they tend to learn better.
4. Feedback — The student remembers positive as well as negative feedback. Research shows that feedback helps strengthen a person’s mind map. Exams are the traditional feedback mechanism. in the case of application-based learning, these are online assessments.
Solutions currently available in the market rely on encrypted content, embedded videos and paid manual support to enhance the learning experience.
This is a gap that has yet to be addressed, and also a huge opportunity for improvement and innovation in the field.
The quality of the course content may be excellent, but it can never replace the component of personal validation that the learner seeks to strengthen their mind map.
Online mobile education is just a supplement and not a substitute for in-person education precisely because of these reasons in the present scenario.
Chatbots are an artificial intelligence-based solution that relies on natural language processing and native language production to address some aspects that are missing in existing mobile apps, such as the Instagram bot.
Chatbots act as an online representative that can answer some of your questions.
The best success story of chatbots these days is the use of them by financial organizations to solve specific customer queries without calling or visiting a branch.
Chatbots are also widely used in scenarios that have traditionally developed intensive use cases. This is because they rely heavily on historical data and the flow of conversations.
An advanced version of the chatbot is Amelia, which has gained a lot of popularity in domains.
Chatbot uses Robotic Process Automation methodology along with natural language processing to provide a better customer experience while gathering useful insights for the supplier.
Now, back in the education field, where a real human teacher imparts his learning to students through innovative methods and further reinforces it by asking and answering questions, a chatbot can work like magic.
1. 360 degree viewThe trainer uploads a comprehensive lecture video to explain the concept. The difference comes when a student is faced with the doubt that they cannot ask anyone online.
A chatbot window appears and asks: what can i do for you today The AI-based tool has already recorded the current context to answer the question.
This tool has been trained on data sets of several terabytes in size on this particular topic and has most likely developed a good understanding.
If you can’t answer, it says: “I’m sorry, but you may have to see a professional about this.” Voila! That’s how we sell.
2. Teaching method — During the course, the chatbot seeks feedback from students. The student shares feedback and the chatbot uses its smart system to suggest: Want to refer other faculty courses? Do you want to change the language mode?
A student can have a better learning experience than before. If the student is not satisfied with the solution, the chatbot reconnects them with a manual expert.
3. Engagement — The student faces a doubt in the middle of the training. He types the same in the chatbot present on the right side of the tutorial window.
The chatbot uses its enhanced knowledge to answer in this context and also offers additional training to further deepen the concepts.
A student can clarify small doubts without having to google more pages, a straight cut method to keep the student focused and reinforce the learning with zero confusions.
4. Feedback — At the end of the course, the student is asked to take a small test to check his understanding. Unlike the traditional MCQ window, the quiz is administered by a chatbot.
When a student gives an incorrect answer, it explains why this answer was incorrect and the best way to approach such questions for future reference.
After a course is completed, it provides a final score and uses its intelligent model to suggest more courses to reinforce the student’s learning.
Using a chatbot allows the consumer to have a better experience and also allows the provider to get better feedback on their courses.
Chatbots can also be offered to students to connect with them on a personal level and address their concerns or make individual decisions.
- Answering questions that a child may not be able to ask in class due to peer pressure and fear of ridicule from teachers and friends.
- Slow learners may attend the same course multiple times and continue to overcome doubts and confusion to catch up with others.
- Fast learners can look to the chatbot for recommendations to understand what courses they can take next instead of waiting in classrooms. They can also ask questions such as topics that can enable them to develop in a particular area of interest or to answer certain questions in a training module.
- Younger students may rely on the chatbot to seek answers that their parents or teachers may not have addressed.
- Students who have a habit of asking a lot of questions can happily interact with the chatbot to satisfy those curious pangs every now and then.
- Chatbot customization will increase student comfort level and engagement at every age.
- A chatbot can become a personal advisor to children at a crucial stage, who can decide how they can develop their career.
- A chatbot can be a personal assistant that helps a child plan their courses to complete all subjects before the d-day.
- A chatbot can seek student feedback for improvements at the click of a button. It can also be used to build a student profile to best guide them.
- A learning and language model should be robust and comprehensive. A poorly designed system is even worse for a student than chat support. This is because it may confuse children or present the entire application solution as incomplete and ineffective.
- A chatbot should not slow down the overall system. Integrating the chatbot into the existing system should be seamless, so it won’t cause other system performance issues.
- Security is a concern that must be taken care of at all times. Chatbots need to be galvanized against abuse by hackers because they get information directly from the main database to learn from every experience. A chatbot should be able to identify a malicious user and notify the security team.
Educational mobile apps have only touched the tip of the iceberg in terms of value addition and contribution.
Many remote villages in India rely on online education for learning. Chatbot implementation should be such that it permeates every level of users.
As time and penetration increase, businesses must discover further innovative ways to enhance the educational experience and make the social difference they are capable of.
Harikrishna Kundaria, Marketer, Developer, IoT, ChatBot and Blockchain Expert, Designer, Co-Founder, Director eSparkBiz Technologiesa A mobile application development company. His 8+ experience enables him to provide digital solutions to new start-ups based on IoT and Blockchain.