University Students’ Perception on the Usefulness of the Incorporation of Conversational Agents in Mathematics Learning

Abstract

The open-ended interactions between the educator and student could definitely achieve a great success of teaching and learning. However, this is not easy to apply in the university classes as most classes are large size. Conversational agents, automated computer software that interact with human users through human language conversations, may implement into education to support the teaching and learning process. Unfortunately, this application in education domain is found scarce even though it has about 60 years’ history. This study is to design, develop and incorporate a conversational agent in the teaching and learning of undergraduate's mathematics subject. A quasi experimental design with a convenient sample was used. The students were brief and used it for learning outside the classroom as a blended learning tool for a month when they were taught by the lecturer in face-to-face classes. After that, they participated a 5 Likert-scale adapted questionnaire on perception toward this incorporation. Results shown that majority of them perceived positively on the aspect of usefulness of incorporation in their learning. The results cannot be generalized in accordance for all subjects, undergraduates and universities, but, may serve as a reference to design and develop educational conversational agent to be blended into learning for other subjects or universities.