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ABSTRACT
Supporting student academic success has been one of the major goals for higher education. However, low teacher-to-student ratio makes it difficult for students to receive sufficient and personalized support that they might want to. The advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) and conversational agents, such as chatbots, has provided opportunities for assisting learning for different types of students. This research aims at investigating the opportunities and requirements of chatbots as an intelligent helper to facilitate equity in learning. We developed a chatbot as an experimental platform to investigate the design opportunities of using chatbots to support inclusive learning. Through a chatbot-led user study with 215 undergraduate students, we found chatbots provide the opportunity to support students who are disadvantaged, with diverse life environments, and with varied learning styles. This could be achieved through an accessible, interactive, and confidential way.
Keywords: Chatbot, Learning, IS education, Artificial intelligence, Inclusive learning
1.INTRODUCTION
Supporting student academic and professional success has been one of the major goals for higher education. Education research has shown that positive social interaction between students and teachers enhances student learning (Cole et al., 2019; Luo et al., 2017; Muir et al., 2019; Wallace, 2003). However, understaffing and a low mentor-to-students ratio make it difficult for students to receive sufficient support and guidance that they might want. This is further strained with students not having similar resources as others, making education exclusive for some groups (Ortagus, 2017), which leads to an urgent question of how to provide a personalized learning environment at scale.
The advancement of artificial intelligent (AI) and conversational agents (Luger & Sellen, 2016), such as chatbots (Grudin & Jacques, 2019), has provided promising opportunities for assisting student life in higher education (Goel & Polepeddi, 2016). The term "chatbot," coined from "chatting robot," refers to intelligent machines that can conduct text-based conversations with users. Chatbots were initially studied in the early 1980s but did not receive much attention until the past decade with the development of natural language processing and deep learning. Starting from chatbots that are integrated in messaging applications (e.g., Facebook and Slack) and used for customer services, researchers have also leveraged chatbots in answering basic questions, providing information, and offering interactive support in various domains (Avula et al., 2018; Jain...