Chatbot to improve learning punctuation in Spanish and to enhance open and flexible learning environments

• Published in: International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education Vol. 18; no. 1; pp. 1 - 20
• Main Authors: Vázquez-Cano, Esteban, Mengual-Andrés, Santiago, López-Meneses, Eloy
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cham Springer International Publishing 28.06.2021; BioMed Central, Ltd; Springer Nature B.V; SpringerOpen
• Subjects: Artificial Intelligence; Chatbot; Chatbots; Colleges & universities; Colon; Communication; Computer Appl. in Social and Behavioral Sciences; Computer Mediated Communication; Computer Science; Computers and Education; Control Groups; Dirichlet problem; Distance Education; Distance learning; Education; Educational Technology; Experimental Groups; Foreign Countries; Higher Education; Humanities; Information Systems Applications (incl.Internet); Instructional Effectiveness; Instructional Improvement; Law; Learning Processes; Methodology; Mobile learning; Nontraditional Education; Perception; Pretests Posttests; Punctuation; Research Article; Spanish; Spanish language; Statistics for Social Sciences; Students; Teaching Methods; Teaching Models; Virtual learning environments; Spain; Chatbot; Mobile learning; Virtual learning environments; Education; Artificial intelligence; Communication
• ISSN: 2365-9440; 2365-9440
• DOI: 10.1186/s41239-021-00269-8

The objective of this article is to analyze the didactic functionality of a chatbot to improve the results of the students of the National University of Distance Education (UNED / Spain) in accessing the university in the subject of Spanish Language. For this, a quasi-experimental experiment was designed, and a quantitative methodology was used through pretest and posttest in a control and experimental group in which the effectiveness of two teaching models was compared, one more traditional based on exercises written on paper and another based on interaction with a chatbot. Subsequently, the perception of the experimental group in an academic forum about the educational use of the chatbot was analyzed through text mining with tests of Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), pairwise distance matrix and bigrams. The quantitative results showed that the students in the experimental group substantially improved the results compared to the students with a more traditional methodology (experimental group / mean: 32.1346 / control group / mean: 28.4706). Punctuation correctness has been improved mainly in the usage of comma, colon and periods in different syntactic patterns. Furthermore, the perception of the students in the experimental group showed that they positively value chatbots in their teaching–learning process in three dimensions: greater “support” and companionship in the learning process, as they perceive greater interactivity due to their conversational nature; greater “feedback” and interaction compared to the more traditional methodology and, lastly, they especially value the ease of use and the possibility of interacting and learning anywhere and anytime.