A Configurable Agent to Advance Peers’ Productive Dialogue in MOOCs

Abstract

Chatbot technology can greatly contribute towards the creation of personalized and engaging learning activities. Still, more experimentation is needed on how to integrate and use such agents in real world educational settings and, especially, in large-scale learning environments such as MOOCs. This paper presents the prototype design of a teacher-configurable conversational agent service, aiming to scaffold synchronous collaborative activities in MOOCs. The architecture of the conversational agent system is followed by a pilot evaluation study, which was conducted in the context of postgraduate computer science course on Learning Analytics. The preliminary study findings reveal an overall favorable student opinion as regards the ease of use and user acceptance of the system.