Issue link: http://educator.cta.org/i/1400485
Illustrations: Smashicons from flaticon.com Y O U M A Y B E familiar with using a chatbot on your favorite retail site to answer shopping questions, or perhaps to answer basic health questions before visiting a doctor. Did you know that you can also set up a chatbot for your classroom as a teaching assistant? Education chatbots allow educators to populate lesson materials, answers to frequently asked questions and other engaging resources to assist your stu- dents in learning. Here are some creative ways chatbots are being used in the classroom today : Where to Get Started? Botsify.com Use drag-and-drop templates to create a Facebook Messenger chatbot. Chatfuel.com Build an Instagram chatbot without having to touch a single line of code. By Terry Ng Transform Your Teaching With a Chatbot No limit Have multiple students with questions? A chatbot can answer students' questions without them having to wait in line. A chatbot has endless patience and can answer repetitive questions about deadlines, exercises and lessons, no matter how many times they 've been asked, day or night. Save time Have a multiple-choice test? Use a chatbot to deploy and score the test for you. As machine learning algorithms improve, chatbots will also be able to score open-ended assignments like essays. Proactive reminders A chatbot doesn't just answer questions. It can also be set up to send homework reminders, class news, lesson details, and other important messages. Personal tutors Not every student learns the same way, with many needing one-on-one attention. Using AI technology, chatbots can tailor learning by analyzing what subject gives an individual student the most trouble and deliver review materials that will help them learn at a pace they 're comfortable with. Engaging experience Chatbots can use decision trees to guide students through a series of questions and answers to help them understand a subject better, or they can tap into a library of interactive tutorials to deliver relevant content to students. In ways like these, chatbots can supplement reading a textbook. 54 cta.org Teaching & Learning T E C H T I P S