A Model of a Virtual Tutor Capable of Seeking the Answer to the Learners Concern in the Teachers Course Material

Abstract

In the operation of online and distance learning institutions, tutors are responsible for coaching, mentoring, and guiding learners during their courses. However, when a learner needs a tutor, the tutor is sometimes overwhelmed and unable to satisfy the learner in time.Moreover, the mode and time of work differ from student to student, which makes monitoring very difficult. Thus, to overcome the unavailability of a tutor or teacher, we proposed a conversational agent that can address the concerns of students in real time based on the teachers course. The objective was to design a chatbot that can interact with the learner, understand his/her concerns and provide accurate answers at any time, autonomously browsing the course of the concerned teacher. We used a natural language processing (NLP) method to enable our chatbot to understand human language and respond to questions asked. The results showedthat our chatbot manages to provide an adequate response depending on the context.