In the first project year, consortium partners carried out the 1st round of piloting the Differ application and prepared the 2nd round of piloting. FOI also participated in the piloting through introduction of Differ in 5 courses. Each educator that used Differ in their course determined the dynamics of communication. Upon completion of the piloting, students used the Hubert chatbot and surveys to evaluate the course and their experience with the chatbots.
Differ is a messaging application with chatbot functionalities designed for students and teachers to facilitate their communication, and Hubert is a chatbot designed to collect feedback about courses, teaching materials, and other aspects of teaching from students offering an automated analysis of collected responses. The goal of these applications is to support comfortable communication, encourage better student connectivity, and facilitate feedback collection, with the goal of positively impacting student performance and quality of teaching.
Even though, according to the analysis, Differ did not prove to be an innovative tool it was shown that it can have a positive impact on the improvement of the course and that there is a lot of room for improvement. The analysis also showed that for 84.21% of respondents who participated in the survey Differ had a positive impact on their communication with the subject teacher. The evaluation of courses via the Hubert chatbot showed how new technologies can change established practices and facilitate the collection of feedback from students.
FOI's project team presented the detailed analysis of students' responses on chatbots in education in three scientific papers, two of which were presented at the INTED2021 conference held from 8 to 9 March 2021, and the third will be presented at the HCI International 2021 conference in July 2021. years:
You can read more about the project on this link.