Engaging students to fill surveys using chatbots: University case study

Abstract

The use of chatbot or conversational agents is becoming common these days by the companies in many fields to make smart conversations with users. Backed by artificial intelligence and natural language processing they provide a strong platform to engage users. These positive aspects of chatbots can be beneficial in the educational sector, especially in conducting online survey. This study aims to explore the feasibility of a new chatbot approach survey as a new survey method in Moroccan university to overcome the web survey’s common response quality problems. Indeed, having student feedback before and after graduation is essential for university assessment. This new approach keeps students engaged, supportive, and even excited to offer feedback without getting bored and dropping the conversation, especially in Moroccan universities known by an overcrowding of students where it is difficult to get their feedback. This feedback feeds into our university' databases for further reporting and decision making to improve the quality of educational content and student-oriented services. Finally, we have shown the effectiveness of our approach by a comparative data study between the traditional online survey and the use of this chatbot.