As the world has been turned upside down this year, most Educators are now finding themselves teaching in a 100% online or hybrid learning environment. This shift has been driven by necessity and urgency, but also professional curiosity. Planning for the next semester, and perhaps also the next year, one relevant question might be “How can we make the most of the digital opportunities?
I’m sure you have interacted with a chatbot sometime in the last year, probably when engaging with customer service departments. But have you ever used it in a learning and teaching context? The Edubots project is about exploring the best practice use of “chatbots“ in Higher Education. We are asking ourselves how a conversational agent might help to improve the learning experience and the learning outcomes of students.
Open call for Educators
The Edubots consortium is inviting all Higher Education colleagues from around Europe to participate in an open knowledge sharing community around this topic. No previous experience with chatbots is required. As a member of the community, you will get access to a MOOC where you can learn the basics about chatbots. You will also get access to two custom built chatbots from consortium partners Differ.Chat and Hubert.AI that you can trial out with your students, free of charge. They are also designed to be easy to use for teachers.
Differ.Chat is providing a social chatbot named Bo, designed to help students break the ice and get to know each other. Ultimately, the goal is to support new friendships and a stronger sense of belonging in your learning community.
Hubert.AI is designed to improve the student feedback process, replacing traditional surveys with a conversational interface for students. Free text feedback can be cumbersome to analyze, especially when volume increases. The Hubert solution is providing automatic text analysis, with the purpose of sentiment analysis, giving actionable insights from student feedback.
We are now inviting members of learning & teaching departments to become partners in the project, to engage your local teaching community with the opportunities of Edubots. This is probably relevant also for other departments, like Technology Enhanced Learning, or Student Engagement. In short, here are some of the key benefits:
Dissemination partnership:
- Access for all teaching staff to MOOC about "Chatbots in Higher Education"
- Access for all teaching staff to a European peer community of Educators in Higher Education.
- Free software license for two chatbot solutions provided by Differ.Chat and Hubert.AI.
There is no financial requirement to become a dissemination partner. Please sign up today for more information, or book an introductory call with our community manager to explore how to make the most of Edubots at your university.
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