education

Chatbots in Childhood Education

April 13, 20212 min read

Advanced chatbots, using conversational, contextual AI, have versatile and promising applications. Chatbots have many advantages inherent within an automated platform, including promptness of response, scalability and accessibility. Recent advances have also increased the amount of personalization a chatbot can offer. This is especially evident when compared to existing communication methods such as mass emails and push notifications sent out to every user of an app.

This has been proven in traditionally human fields such as mental care. A company called Woebot created a chatbot that provides "continuous emotional support" to its users. It forges a personalized connection to the user to glean useful information for human specialists and to help deal with symptoms of stress and anxiety. This allows for human-like support that isn't limited by doctor availability or cost.

Higher education institutions have also begun to use chat bots. Georgia State University rolled out a bot that helped students with enrolling and getting to college, decreasing the amount of admitted students who didn't show up by 19%. Response levels from students were much higher with the bot than with email reminders. Chatbot platform Acquire identifies several different functions a chatbot can perform in education: providing information about school, administrative support, offering reminders and assistance, tutoring, and engaging students.

A chatbot built for younger students would most likely focus on the third, fourth, and fifth functions due to the nature of elementary schooling. As mentioned in a previous post, simple nudges and reminders are especially essential for younger children. In addition, children are less likely to be able to navigate information sources on their own. Communication-based chatbots are naturally easier interfaces for anyone, especially children, to use. Being able to answer basic questions and guide exploration would be a major benefit in and of itself in the education of young children.

Of course, a potential chatbot would have to be tailored for younger children specifically. It has to use grade-appropriate wording, while ideally selectively using new vocabulary to promote linguistic growth. There's also a higher barrier to reach in terms of chatbot personality: a child would have little intrinsic motivation to keep on talking to a chatbot if it doesn't act like a human. These are challenges that must be addressed in any chat bot dedicated towards childhood education.

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