Enhancing Adaptive Online Chemistry Course with AI-Chatbot

This paper presents the design and development of a virtual conversational tutor (AI chatbot) that complements an existing pre-freshman adaptive online Chemistry course. While students acknowledge the fact that the online Chemistry course is beneficial in preparing them for first year Chemistry modules, the overall completion rate of the online course remains low (∼15%) as students cite the lack of immediate response from instructor while attempting the course. To increase the level of student engagement and guide students while completing the online course, an AI chatbot is introduced. The chatbot is designed to replicate the real-time interaction between a student and an instructor. It is worth noting that the chatbot was designed not to answer the questions directly, but rather to scaffold the learning for the students and guide them towards the final answer. Beta testing results shows that students prefer a chatbot that is available 24/7 compared to a tutor that is available at limited scheduled time, as the chatbot caters to the flexibility of students' varying study schedule and preference. Encouraged by the positive results in the Beta testing, the chatbot is scheduled for full deployment in Summer 2021 to serve 280 incoming freshmen. A future study has been designed to investigate at which point students will be able to differentiate an actual instructor in synchronous communication from a chatbot. In addition, feedback results from the deployment will explore whether the adoption of a chatbot that provides question-answer immediacy improves the overall completion rate of the online Chemistry course.