Author: Franz Malten Buemann

  • Why is Education Industry Opting for AI Chatbots?

    In most cases, chatbots can be used to give basic lectures. The objective is that chatbots can serve as virtual advisors and that in the process they adapt to the abilities of the students. In other words, they adapt to their learning pace.

    Source: Google

    Students are no more receptive to traditional learning. They are constantly finding interactive ways to communicate & acquire knowledge.

    Chatbot has constantly been delivering interactive learning to the students.

    37% of students use a educational chatbot to get a quick answer!

    However, newbie educators are a bit skeptical about chatbots favoring them. The reason being a lack of empathy, words of encouragement, and understanding, which are still missing in this technology.

    For example, this:

    • Will the chatbot reply adequately when a learner asks a long question?
    • How many chats does a bot need to collect to deliver a good human response?

    So, how do educators justify themselves amidst such competition? How do they satisfy the accelerating need of students for interactive learning if they are skeptical about this technology?

    Let’s figure out in the article below:

    Chatbots in Education Business — An Interactive Tool

    The education industry is constantly evolving (especially after the COVID-19 aftermath). The conversational design with AI delivers an effective communication path for students. Chatbot designs are being reformed to fit modern learning demands.

    Students prefer modern ways to learn and absorb information. Also, they want a personalized learning environment. Chatbots help students experience innovation in education. It helps the system detect whether students are adapting to learning material or not too.

    In fact, learners can easily try their hands on innovative activities, which were barely available in schools.

    AI-powered voice bots & chatbots keep learners engaged. It even reduces the administrative load while facilitating the teaching process.

    In short, this artificially intelligent conversational tool is designed to boost student association & interaction.

    Isn’t that interesting? It is. What’s more interesting is how this tool works for the education system.

    Want to know how? Let’s see!

    Chatbots in Education Business — The Influence

    The education industry is definitely influenced by chatbots, here’s how:

    1. Tutoring was Never So Easy

    ‘Intelligent Tutoring Systems’ is the best thing in the education industry today. It delivers the much-needed personalized learning experience today. Techniques, including analyzing responses and observing student’s progress leads to more personalized learning.

    For example, educators use chatbots to break lecture sessions into chains of messages to simplify chat conversation.

    Chatbots even assess the understanding level of students, also how well they progress. Teaching was never so easy, as it has become with technologies like chatbots.

    Trending Bot Articles:

    1. How Chatbots and Email Marketing Integration Can Help Your Business

    2. Why Chatbots could be the next big thing for SMEs

    3. My Journey into Conversation Design

    4. Practical NLP for language learning

    2. Effective Student Engagement

    Students prefer social media channels to communicate, research topics, and find apt solutions in their assignments. Hence, learning is not limited to classrooms.

    Just imagine using a messaging platform (somewhat like social media) that connects students and teachers for:

    • Discussions
    • Assignment sharing
    • Messaging
    • Sharing information

    Chatbot makes all this possible.

    Students can save hours to find information about lectures and assignments and other important events. They can even create alumni groups and activity clubs for sharing information with each other.

    3. Prompt Assistance to Learners

    Students have information at their fingertips nowadays. Chatbots enable learners to receive all information almost instantly. It demands educational institutions to be on their toes all the time. Why? Because of the growing demand of learners for effective communication.

    Chatbots in the education business simplifies communication between tutors and learners. It automates time-consuming tasks. It even lets educators promptly assist learners.

    4. Simple Access to Information

    Education bots simplify information sharing between the learners and teachers. It helps build a stronger presence online.

    Learners can visit your website, ask any query (related to your institute), and get the answer instantly. That’s how chatbots allow learners to access information instantly.

    Access to the right information is important in the education business. Students must get appropriate knowledge and material for proper learning. Chatbots help them reach the right audience, the right information, at the right time. That’s even faster than people reaching out to administrators for the solutions.

    Chatbots save time, automates repetitive tasks, and offer answers to queries almost instantly.

    Why are Chatbots for the Education Industry Important?

    The chatbots in the education business were overshadowed in the beginning. However, administrators and tutors understand its value now. Chatbot engages students and streamlines processes more efficiently.

    A chatbot is a Channel for Learning

    An intelligent tutoring system offers a dedicated learning environment to study. Students feel motivated in such an environment, dedicate more hours to study, and interact with like-minded people.

    AI chatbots teach learners via a series of messages and consistent conversations made out of learning lecture material.

    Chatbots analyze every piece of information, assess a student’s understanding level, and deliver lectures considering their personalized needs.

    Custom solutions can come in form of:

    • Audio content
    • Interactive videos
    • Document files
    • Attractive Images
    • Quizzes
    • Test Assignments
    • Text Messaging
    • Video conferencing, and more

    Educators can analyze, monitor, and compare the student’s performance anytime and anywhere to deliver highly customized learning solutions to students.

    Spaced Interval Learning

    Now, let’s suppose you designed an online learning course for a certain group of people. Learners, here are those who manage their home and work. So, in a quick attempt to pass the course, they just try to complete the course somehow, receive the credits hours, and pass it.

    Spaced learning breaks lengthy courses into small modules. It helps learners remember what’s taught in the course.

    Using spaced interval learning, learners memorize courses for a longer time. Hence, enhanced learning experience for learners.

    Proctoring

    The online education system comes with its own pros and cons. For some students, it is an interactive and engaging way of learning. But others don’t even hesitate to earn points dishonestly too. That happens especially during distance learning.

    AI online proctoring space controls such frauds during the exams. Students can no longer attempt any fraud when giving exams. They have to earn points the right way. Thanks to Chatbots proctoring.

    Test Scoring

    Chatbots help tutors automate tests and answer-checking. It instantly converts results into points. Also, teachers no longer need to worry about plagiarism and grammar. The chatbot does that as well. It fixes grammatical errors, typos, images reuse, and lack of adequate referencing.

    The Final Words

    AI Chatbots in cooperation with the education business gives us a more customized, easy, and interactive learning experience.

    Today, chatbots are available for different groups:

    • Chatbot for Tutors
    • Chatbot for Students
    • Chatbots for Schools
    • Chatbot for Higher education

    Modern chatbots are designed to conduct highly complicated chores. However, all that needs is good coding. Bots are built to answer specific answers. Hence, it depends on users’ search what outcomes they will acquire.

    When choosing bots for your institution, pick one that connects to several communication channels at once. For instance, it must allow login from social media channels (because students are mostly there).

    Chatbots are the future of the education industry. Let’s make the most of it now to reap benefits in the future.

    Don’t forget to give us your 👏 !


    Why is Education Industry Opting for AI Chatbots? was originally published in Chatbots Life on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

  • Android chatbot

    Hello ! I am developing a chatbot using kotlin. How I can make a bot response message contains yes/no buttons ?

    submitted by /u/Tebai
    [link] [comments]

  • Voice Assistants Use Case — Automobile Dealership

    Voice Assistants Use Case — Automobile Dealership

    Alexa!

    Hey Siri!

    Hey Google!

    If those audible prompts aren’t something you regularly use to search, shop, and interact online, you are about to be in the minority. By 2021, it has been forecasted that 60% of all online searches will be performed via voice search.

    That may be a daunting stat if you don’t already have an SEO strategy for your automotive dealership that takes voice search into consideration. Luckily, you have some time — only around 30–40% of searches are currently conducted by voice. Consumers are regularly searching for local businesses via voice search. In fact, 58% of consumers have used voice search to find a local business within the last year. And 46% of voice search users look for local businesses on a daily basis.

    Customers will be able to ask for information related to any car model and they will be given the answer in a quick and efficient manner. Using Alexa and Google Home users will be able to book a test drive at their nearest showroom with just a few commands. Users can get post-sales support like booking a service appointment or make an inquiry regarding the availability of spare parts.

    Customers can ask the assistant to book a test drive of the car of their choice at the desired showroom location and time.

    Customers can book a service appointment at the service station of their choice in just a few steps.

    Trending Bot Articles:

    1. How Chatbots and Email Marketing Integration Can Help Your Business

    2. Why Chatbots could be the next big thing for SMEs

    3. My Journey into Conversation Design

    4. Practical NLP for language learning

    Customers can locate the nearest dealer from their house and get details via SMS or email.

    Customers can check for space parts, accessory prices, and availability at their nearest dealership.

    Customers can ask for vital information like insurance expiry, next service date, etc., and can also get reminders for the same where Alexa will prompt the user about it few days before the expiry date.

    A smart assistant can help customers choose a car by asking them a series of questions and then recommend a car based on their preference.

    “Hey Google — What Color Does the 2019 Honda Accord Come In?”

    As a quick example, the search ‘What color does the 2019 Honda Accord come in?’ has a featured snippet for Howdy Honda on Google. If you asked the Google Assistant, it would read off what that result says under the snippet itself by starting ‘According to Howdy Honda…’ The same can be said for Bing results with the Alexa, and so on.

    The brand equity and search relevance for Honda-related terms skyrockets for a given dealership from this kind of result. That kind of ‘Google-approved’ spoken advertising proves that Google trusted the content on that page at that dealership enough to reward it as the answer of choice.

    Catch up to the customer trend to stay live in your business. If you are still confused or willing to have more knowledge on the use cases/applicability of voice assistants in the Automobile Dealership space, talk to us on Voxogenic.com for a free consultation.

    If you are looking to build any kind of conversation apps that works through Voice and Chat, please feel free to drop us an email at contact@voxogenic.com

    We have expertise in designing and developing Voice applications on Amazon Alexa & Google Home and Chatbots for platforms such as Website, Mobile Apps, Facebook, Twitter, Slack, Line, Skype, and many more.

    To know more about us you can visit https://www.voxogenic.com


    Voice Assistants Use Case — Automobile Dealership was originally published in Chatbots Life on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

  • Why chatbots are the new apps, and why they are not?

    Three reasons why chatbots are the new apps, and two why they are not, at least not yet.

  • Generative Adversarial Networks using Unit Selection Synthesis Based Virtual Assistant for the…

    The virtual assistant is a software-based program which can perform tasks or particular service for an individual. In the coming era…

  • Voice Assistant Use Case – Health and Wellness

    With cutting-edge artificial intelligence upgrading our lives above mediocrity, voice technology emerges out to be the healthcare stalwarts of the future. From handling follow-up calls to medical triage, booking appointments, and even diagnosis, VUI (Voice User Interface) is the perfect combination of medical knowledge with technology and tones of conversation to be the voice of the healthcare industry.

    To prevent the spread of COVID-19 and to continue responding to healthcare needs, hospitals are rapidly adopting telehealth and other digital health tools to deliver care remotely. Intelligent conversational agents and virtual assistants, such as chatbots and voice assistants, have been utilized to augment health service capacity to screen symptoms, deliver healthcare information, and reduce exposure. In this commentary, we examined the state of voice assistants (e.g., Google Assistant, Apple Siri, Amazon Alexa) as an emerging tool for remote healthcare delivery service and discussed the readiness of the health system and technology providers to adapt voice assistants as an alternative healthcare delivery modality during a health crisis and pandemic.

    In this fast-moving world, people tend to ignore a very basic part of their lives, their health. We at Voxogenic Technologies believe in the old adage, ‘Health is Wealth’. A voice assistant for general health and wellness seemed like the perfect answer to counter this. It can tackle the following use cases:

    The user can make use of the voice assistant to act as their personal trainer. By mixing and matching a set of customized exercises, the user can create their very own workout routine and the voice assistant to repeat them. E.g. ‘Alexa, start my daily workout routine.’ ‘You have 3 workout routines, which one would you like to choose for today?’

    The user can ask the voice assistant to calculate their B.M.I. by gathering some basic information about the user. It can also store the data, set a target for the user’s ideal B.M.I., and help you keep track of your progress.

    Trending Bot Articles:

    1. How Chatbots and Email Marketing Integration Can Help Your Business

    2. Why Chatbots could be the next big thing for SMEs

    3. My Journey into Conversation Design

    4. Practical NLP for language learning

    Booking an appointment has never been this effortless. Now the user can book a doctor’s appointment, ask for recommended doctors in the area, and more.

    The trick is to make this as easy as possible for the patient. Just like the patient beds in hospitals are equipped with a button, the voice assistant can work as the button without the need to look for a button.

    In a smart hospital ward, the user will have the option to control the electrical appliances without having the hassle to move around or finding the remote.

    A user may have multiple ailments for which the doctor may have prescribed multiple medicines. It will be up to the voice assistant to keep the user informed about which medicine to take when. E.g ‘Alexa, which medicine should I take for a common cold?’ ‘The doctor has prescribed you Wikoryl for your cold.’

    The user may forget to take a medicine or two due to some factor or the other. This can be minimized by giving the user the option to set reminders for the daily medication.

    In this use case, the user won’t be prescribed medicines but rather act as a pre-screening to potential disease. The user will be able to get help regarding their symptoms from the voice bot.

    The voice assistant can act as an answer hub for all the queries. The user may ask questions regarding the availability of doctors, diseases, etc.

    The voice bot can help give daily bits of customized information even when the user is not in need of any help. The information can be tailored to match the user’s needs.

    A better and improved healthcare industry is on the go to renovate the conventional healthcare modes. Artificial intelligence-backed tools, smart and friendly Alexa, voice apps with medical proficiency are dominating the market. The integration of voice technology with the medical arena can bring about revolutionary changes. From understanding patient behavior to comprehending the effects of the drug, recognizing health emergencies, and setting up appointments, voice technology will lead to a paradigm shift in the present model of the healthcare industry.

    So pull up your socks! The next time you receive a follow-up call from a hospital may not be someone of flesh and blood. It may be a chatbot trained to converse with you and give you pills for a happy and healthy life. Talk to one of our representatives to integrate customized voice technology solutions for your business.

    If you are looking to build any kind of conversation apps that works through Voice and Chat, please feel free to drop us an email at contact@voxogenic.com

    We have expertise in designing and developing Voice applications on Amazon Alexa & Google Home and Chatbots for platforms such as Website, Mobile Apps, Facebook, Twitter, Slack, Line, Skype, and many more.

    To know more about us you can visit https://www.voxogenic.com

    Don’t forget to give us your 👏 !


    Voice Assistant Use Case –
    Health and Wellness
    was originally published in Chatbots Life on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

  • Build Chatbots for SharePoint using Power Virtual Agents & SPFx

    How to build powerful chatbots on Power Virtual Agents(PVA) and then host it on SharePoint using SharePoint Framework (SPFx)

    PVA Chatbot in SharePoint in action

    Introduction

    PVA is a new service from Microsoft that just came out of public preview in mid 2020. It allows users to easily build powerful and complex chatbots using a no-code user interface. If used together with SharePoint, it empowers companies to easily build chatbots for their company intranets that can answer employees’ frequently asked questions, find people or documents and more.

    This post is a step by step guide on how you can build a chatbot using PVA and host it on SharePoint using SPFx extensions.

    Prerequisites

    Step-by-step Guide

    1. Creating a bot on PVA & obtain bot ID

    Head over to the PVA Portal and follow the on-screen step-by-step instructions to create your PVA bot. In here, you will be able to choose what language you want your bot to understand. Currently, you can only have 1 language per bot.

    Trending Bot Articles:

    1. How Chatbots and Email Marketing Integration Can Help Your Business

    2. Why Chatbots could be the next big thing for SMEs

    3. My Journey into Conversation Design

    4. Practical NLP for language learning

    Create new bot popup on PVA

    From the left panel, select “Manage > Channels” and then select “Custom Website”. Copy the Bot ID and paste it somewhere, we will need it later.

    2. Create SPFx extension

    We will need to create a SPFx extension in order to host our PVA bot on SharePoint. SPFx extension allows us to deploy our bot to all pages in a single site. If you just want to create a bot in a single page, you can use SPFx web parts instead.

    To create a SPFx extension, open your command line and in the folder that you want to create your SPFx extension, run the command below and key in the following values. Feel free to change the name and description to something to your liking.

    yo @microsoft/sharepoint

    What is your solution name? pva-chatbot
    Which baseline packages do you want to target for your component(s)? SharePoint Online only (latest)
    Where do you want to place the files? Use the current folder
    Do you want to allow the tenant admin the choice of being able to deploy the solution to all sites immediately without running any feature deployment or adding apps in sites? No
    Will the components in the solution require permissions to access web APIs that are unique and not shared with other components in the tenant? No
    Which type of client-side component to create? Extension
    Which type of client-side extension to create? Application Customizer
    What is your Application Customizer name? PVAChatbot
    What is your Application Customizer description? PVAChatbot description

    Make sure you are on Node.js v10.x, see the SPFx Extension Getting Started Guide if you are stuck.

    3. Modify SPFx Extension to host PVA Bot

    Install Bot Framework Web Chat using the command below:

    npm install botframework-webchat

    Create a “Chatbot.tsx” file in “src/extensions/<project_name>” and paste the following code into the file. Make sure you change the BOT_ID variable on line 25.

    Head over to “<project_name>ApplicationCustomizer.ts” file, and paste the code below. This will create a Bottom Placeholder across all your pages in the SharePoint site and within the placeholder, it will render the Chatbot Component that we just created.

    4. Serving & testing locally on SharePoint

    Head over to “config/serve.json” and change the pageUrl to your own SharePoint site url.

    Run the command below to serve locally and test

    gulp serve
    Screenshot of PVA Chatbot in Demo SharePoint site

    If you see “Unable to connect” error message in the popup window, it means your BOT_ID is incorrect. Double check your BOT_ID on line 25 of the Chatbot.tsx file.

    5. Deploy to SharePoint

    Run the following commands to build your SPFx extension

    gulp bundle --ship
    gulp package-solution --ship

    You should see a “.sppkg” file being generated in your “sharepoint/solution” folder. Upload this file to your tenant’s SharePoint App Catalog.

    Head over to your SharePoint site that you want to add this Chatbot to. Click on “+ New > App” and then select the newly uploaded extension file and you should see “Open Chatbot” button at bottom of your SharePoint page.

    Adding SPFx extension App to SharePoint site

    Refer to the official SPFx extension deployment guide if you are stuck.

    Conclusion

    This is only the first step, from there you can extend more functionality to your PVA chatbot. Link it up to Power Automate and you achieve some pretty complex features, such as searching for documents, finding people in Azure AD or even link up to external API via Power Automate connectors.

    Want to customise your bot UI on the extension? Want to build more topics on PVA but not sure how? Have more complex use cases but not sure how to build it? Feel free to reach out!

    Don’t forget to give us your 👏 !


    Build Chatbots for SharePoint using Power Virtual Agents & SPFx was originally published in Chatbots Life on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.