Small Talk Conversations and the Long-Term Use of Chatbots in Educational Settings – Experiences from a Field Study

Abstract

In this paper, we analyze the use of small talk conversations based on a dialogue analysis of a long-term field study in which university students regularly interacted with a chatbot during a 3-month period of time in an educational setting. In particular, we analyze (1) how often the students engage with small talk topics during the field study, and (2) whether a larger amount of small talk conversations correlates with the students’ engagement in learning activities within our chatbot-based learning system, i.e., if engaging in small talk conversations correlates to a more intensive use of the chatbot during our field test. Our results suggest that small talk conversations might play an important role in the design of our chatbot as students who chat about small talk topics also frequently chat about learning-related topics. Nevertheless, the overall impact of small talk capabilities of chatbots should not be overestimated.