Hi! Tell me how to do it: examination of undergraduate students’ chatbot-integrated course experiences

Chatbots are used widely to increase student engagement and performance while supporting students’ systematic interaction with course content. In this study, a chatbot was developed and integrated into the learning management system in order to help students on a variety of course administration-related topics including course schedule, locating course materials and getting information about assessment processes. Students’ perceptions towards chatbot-supported course experience, student engagement and potential influence of chatbot use on student achievement were examined. The participants of the research were 99 undergraduate students. The results indicated that the majority of the students preferred the chatbot environment to ask questions about the course content, to reach the course announcements and important deadlines. Although almost half of the students thought that real human-interaction was better than chatbot, a substantial proportion of them found the chatbot application useful in locating course materials and reaching out course announcements. In addition, students had positive perception towards feedback frequency content received via chatbot Study results also indicate that feedback via chatbot supported students’ course performance. The last part of the study examined students’ suggestions to improve chatbot application which can be grouped as three: suggestions to improve chatbot content, suggestions related to the algorithm and suggestions for improving presentation of content. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V.