Opportunities and challenges in using AI Chatbots in Higher Education

Artificial intelligence (AI) conversational chatbots have gained popularity over time, and have been widely used in the fields of e-commerce, online banking, and digital healthcare and well-being, among others. The technology has the potential to provide personalised service to a range of consumers. However, the use of chatbots within educational settings is still limited. In this paper, we present three chatbot prototypes, the Warwick Manufacturing Group, University of Warwick, are currently developing, and discuss the potential opportunities and technical challenges we face when considering AI chatbots to support our daily activities within the department. Three AI virtual agents are under development: 1) to support the delivery of a taught Master's course simulation game; 2) to support the training and use of a newly introduced educational application; 3) to improve the processing of helpdesk requests within a university department. We hope this paper is informative to those interested in using chatbots in the educational domain. We also aim to improve awareness among those within the chatbot development industry, in particular the chatbot engine providers, about the educational and operational needs within educational institutes, which may differ from those in other domains

SOA services in higher education

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is a recent architectural framework for distributed software system development in which software components are packaged as Services. It has become increasingly popular in academia and in industry, but has been principally used in the business domain. However, in higher education, SOA has rarely been applied or investigated. In this paper, we propose the idea of applying SOA technologies in the education domain, to increase both interoperability and flexibility within the e-learning environment. We expect that both students and teachers in higher educational institutions can benefit from this approach. We also describe a number of possible SOA services, along with a high level service roadmap to support a university's learning and teaching activities

An effective services framework for sharing educational resources

Nowadays, the growing number of software tools to support e-learning and the data they rely upon are valuable resources, supporting different aspects of the complex learning and teaching processes, including designing learning content, delivering learning activities, and evaluating students’ learning performance. However, sharing these educational resources efficiently and effectively is a challenge: there are many resources, these have not been described accurately and in general they do not interoperate, and it is common for the tools to rely on different technologies. This thesis explores a solution – a novel educational services framework – to improve the sharing of current e-resources, by applying the latest service technologies in the context of higher education. Our findings suggest that the proposed framework is effective to deal with the technical and educational issues in resource discovery, interoperability and reusability, however, there are still technical challenges remaining for implementing this service framework. This research is divided into 3 phases. The first phase investigates the sharing of elearning resources through a literature survey, and identifies limitations on current developments. In the second phase, the current problems relating to resource sharing are addressed by a proposed educational service framework, which contains both educational and technical components. Through a case study, nine e-learning services and their dataflows are identified. To determine the technical components of the framework, a novel Educational Service Architecture is proposed, which allows resources to be better described, structured and connected, by following the principles of discoverability, interoperability and reusability in service technologies. In the third phase, part of the framework is implemented and evaluated by two studies. In the first study, users’ experiences were collected via a simulation experiment, to compare the effectiveness of a service prototype with that of the use of current technologies. During the second part of the evaluation, technical challenges for implementing the services framework were identified via a case study, involving the implementation of another service prototype

Designing e-learning services : a case study

Recently, increasing numbers of e-learning tools have been developed. However, the benefits of these tools cannot be fully used as they typically operate separately and do not communicate with each other. It is necessary to develop a solution to redeploy existing tools, and create new tools, in a more effective way. Our approach is to link and manage these e-learning tools together, by grouping the tools together and presenting them as a set of e-learning services, implemented using service technologies. In this paper, we propose a set of e-learning services, together with the approach we have adopted to develop them, which are developed based on a case study

Designing e-learning services

Recently, increasing numbers of e-learning tools have been developed. However, the benefits of these tools cannot be fully used as they typically operate separately and do not communicate with each other. It is necessary to develop a solution to redeploy existing tools, and create new tools, in a more effective way. Our approach is to link and manage these e-learning tools together via a service-oriented architecture, in which the tools are grouped together and presented as a set of educational services, and which are implemented using service technologies. In this paper, we propose a set of e-learning services together with the approach we have adopted to develop them

Approaches for teaching prolog to beginners

Prolog is a very different language compared with procedural or object-oriented languages, and developing a Prolog programming mindset is a challenge for many novices. In this paper, we consider a number of teaching approaches which instructors use to deliver basic ideas about Prolog to novices. We classify these approaches into three categories – “logic based”, “declarative features based” and “programs based”. Using this classification as a framework, we describe the prerequisite knowledge required for students to learn Prolog effectively. Finally, we describe how the choice of approach has changed over the past 25 years

An educational services architecture to share e-learning resources

Today many quality e-learning applications have been developed. They are widely used to cover varied aspects of learning and teaching activities, such as developing learning materials, delivering learning activities, and performing assessment tasks. Different applications rely on different technologies, require different access characteristics, and are distributed on different servers across many organisations. However, people cannot fully benefit from these valuable resources as they have not been shared effectively and efficiently — there are many varieties of these resources, but these have not been properly described and linked. In this paper, we propose a service oriented approach as a potential solution to better sharing and reuse of e-learning resources, because it allows resources to be better discovered, accessed and linked

Experiences on sharing e-learning resources using service technologies

Sharing e-learning resources efficiently and effectively is a challenge. One barrier is that currently available resources have not been described accurately and do not readily interoperate. In this paper, we present an evaluation of our novel e-learning services approach which aims to overcome these problems. Results from the evaluation suggest that it is quicker and easier to discover and choose reusable e-learning materials via our service approach, and that the approach offers both practical and educational benefits for its users

Approaches for learning prolog programming

Understanding Prolog programming is a challenge for many beginners, and many instructors and researchers have proposed and adopted varied teaching approaches to help learners to understand Prolog easily. However, it is not known whether any of the teaching approaches currently in use is appropriate from a learner's perspective. This paper reports the results of an investigation into which approaches are suitable for Prolog novices and why they are appropriate