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Harnessing Rule-Based Chatbots to Support Teaching Python Programming Best Practices

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Towards a Hybrid, Flexible and Socially Engaged Higher Education (ICL 2023)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems ((LNNS,volume 899))

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Abstract

In recent years, the use of chatbots in education has been driven by advances in natural language processing and the increasing availability of digital education platforms. Although the added value of educational chatbots appears promising, researchers have noted that there is a need for empirical studies that explore the effects of incorporating chatbots into different learning scenarios. In this paper, we report on the integration of a rule-based chatbot into an information technology course. We conducted a controlled experiment in which half of the students were able to interact with the chatbot during Python lab sessions while the other half completed the sessions without the chatbot. Our results suggest that educational chatbots powered by short, simple, interactive scripts could have a positive impact on the user experience offered by learning technologies and could be pertinent to educators looking to integrate chatbots into their practice.

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Acknowledgments

Images used in this study include icons made by Vector Stall [25] and Bad Arithmetic [1].

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland

    Juan Carlos Farah, Basile Spaenlehauer & Denis Gillet

  2. University of Applied Sciences (HES-SO), Fribourg, Switzerland

    Juan Carlos Farah & Sandy Ingram

  3. Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    Aditya K. Purohit

  4. University of Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland

    Adrian Holzer

Authors
  1. Juan Carlos Farah
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  2. Basile Spaenlehauer
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  3. Sandy Ingram
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  4. Aditya K. Purohit
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  5. Adrian Holzer
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  6. Denis Gillet
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Juan Carlos Farah .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. CTI Global, Frankfurt, Germany

    Michael E. Auer

  2. UTN—FRBA, Mozart, Argentina

    Uriel R. Cukierman

  3. DISA, Technical University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain

    Eduardo Vendrell Vidal

  4. UPM, ETSII, Madrid, Spain

    Edmundo Tovar Caro

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Farah, J.C., Spaenlehauer, B., Ingram, S., Purohit, A.K., Holzer, A., Gillet, D. (2024). Harnessing Rule-Based Chatbots to Support Teaching Python Programming Best Practices. In: Auer, M.E., Cukierman, U.R., Vendrell Vidal, E., Tovar Caro, E. (eds) Towards a Hybrid, Flexible and Socially Engaged Higher Education. ICL 2023. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 899. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-51979-6_47

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