AI Chatbots for E-Learning & Why They Matter

Almost everyone has had experience with online learning. It may have been a corporate training course, an attempt to learn a language using online platforms or apps, or even while getting a higher education. Sure, online learning is highly convenient: you can take your classes anywhere and any time that suits you. But you know what can take it to another level? AI chatbots for e-learning might be the answer.

The use of online education is growing yearly: the global e-learning market is forecast to reach almost USD 400 billion in 2026, up from USD 198 billion in 2019. 

Yet, how can you ensure high-level support and personalization without stretching your resources, including time, money, and effort? This is where AI-powered chatbots come into play. CHI Software, as a pro in the field of AI chatbot development services, is here to explain everything about this topic, from the benefits your business will gain after chatbot integration in e-learning, through to the implementation process.

Article Highlights:

• AI chatbots guarantee that your students have access to help anytime, day or night, without needing a large support team.
• The chatbot developed by CHI Software can automatically evaluate students’ essays and provide instant feedback, empowering teachers to create and customize assessment questions for various subjects like IT, software development, and business.
• With more than half of college students reporting anxiety and depression, chatbots can help by sending motivational messages, celebrating achievements, and offering tips on how to maintain mental health.

The Game-Changing Benefits of Chatbots in E-Learning

E-learning platforms are quickly becoming the backbone of modern education, offering students and professionals a flexible and accessible way to gain knowledge. But what exactly do users and companies get if they use chatbots in the e-learning industry? Let’s look at the top benefits of AI chatbots in education.

24/7 Availability

A chatbot is a tool that can help you stay in touch with your users at all times so you don’t need to hire a huge support team. Day and night, your e-learning chatbot is ready to answer questions, help learners with explanations, resources, or additional practice exercises, add reminders, or even reschedule classes.

The best part is that you define the chatbot functions yourself, while experts providing custom chatbot development services bring your vision to life. Working together, you can easily create an assistant that can handle tasks after hours or during the holidays. 

Cost-Effective Support

You’ve probably already guessed that a digital tool like a chatbot is much more cost-effective in the long run than maintaining a full-time customer support team. And it’s true: by using chatbots in e-learning, you can reduce costs and increase efficiency at the same time.

For example, a knowledge base chatbot can manage repetitive tasks within seconds by answering frequently asked questions and helping with onboarding – one of the clear benefits of chatbots in education. That’s how an integrated chatbot reduces your team’s workload and frees up resources to create an unrivalled learning experience.

Learning That Feels Real

It’s common for users to lose interest in learning part of the way through a lesson – and chatbots can help even here. CHI Software has previously developed an interactive chatbot integrated with an animated 2D character. Thanks to AI and the GPT model, the application character evolves over time, learns, and incorporates new vocabulary. 

Using animated characters is much more exciting than the typical static e-learning tools, right? But engagement is not just about fun, it’s about results. An e-learning chatbot gives students a reason and an opportunity to stick with it longer and continue to learn more.

Learner-Centric Approach

No two learners are alike, and your e-learning platform should reflect this diversity. AI chatbots for e-learning can offer updates on modules completed, assessments, and milestones based on the collected data. 

Moreover, chatbots can provide personalized recommendations, such as suggesting additional resources, practice exercises, or targeted lessons to strengthen specific skills. For a better understanding of students’ progress, AI assistants for e-learning give real-time feedback and help track areas of difficulty. This is why, among all chatbot benefits for students, the user-centric approach is arguably the most important.

Multilingual Support

In addition to overcoming time barriers, a chatbot for online learning also copes with language barriers – they offer multilingual support and make your platform or app accessible to learners worldwide. Whether someone needs help in Spanish, Chinese, or French, an integrated chatbot can help.

These benefits show why mobile accessibility is critical. We recently supported a language learning platform mobile migration, converting an educational web platform into iOS and Android apps with integrated engagement features.

Top Chatbot Use Cases in E-Learning

But how to use chatbots for online education to achieve all the benefits we’ve mentioned? Here are several use cases you can go for.

Course Assistance

Educational chatbots can be a lifesaver when students need help understanding a course’s structure, are in need of feedback, or have topic-specific questions. AI assistants can also suggest personalized plans of study and  revolutionize each user’s virtual learning experience. 

There’s no doubt that chatbots’ integration in e-learning helps every student thrive with tailored education journeys. But they become absolutely vital for neurodivergent learners and those needing extra academic support. That’s why, among the many advantages of chatbots for students, improved accessibility really stands out as one of the most meaningful.

Simplifying Administrative Tasks

The e-learning process includes course registrations and deadline tracking, which can be overwhelming for both the learners and the team. What tool can handle these tasks more efficiently and with ease? Chatbots integration in e-learning, of course. 

Leave it to AI assistants to automatically fill in the forms, send notifications, and guide students and staff through the bureaucratic aspects of education. By dealing with these necessary but, frankly, exhausting routine tasks, a chatbot for online learning platforms, similarly to CRM chatbots, makes life easier for everyone. 

Interactive Learning Experience

Using chatbots in e-learning means providing the highest quality feedback to students: users will be able to see incorrect answers and access the most extensive analysis of their work. Furthermore, a chatbot integrated with other databases will adjust the difficulty of quizzes and assignments depending on the user’s results.

What an AI chatbot can also do is make the whole learning experience more fun by introducing mascots and gamification. And fun leads to better results, too. 67% of students find themselves more engaged and motivated with gamified education, and their test scores improve by up to 34%.

Real-Time Problem Solving

If students are stuck on a topic or have specific questions, chatbots for e-learning can become tutors 24/7. For example, if a student doesn’t understand a term, the chatbot can break it down into simple and easy-to-understand points, which helps students to keep going and feel that they always have an AI tutor by their side. 

Or imagine that a learner needs help with an administrative issue like figuring out tuition deadlines. Round-the-clock support in such situations can save a lot of nerves and, possibly, money. Thankfully, an AI chatbot is always there to assist with any stressful and time-sensitive issue, be it in the middle of the night or during early morning hours.

Providing Emotional Support and Motivation

Studying is often stressful, so students need encouragement or just moral support. In 2018, more than half of college students reported being too depressed to function. Statistics for 2023 show that anxiety and depression are at the top of the list among college students, so it’s no surprise that students are actively seeking help and support. 

The use of chatbots in education can significantly improve the situation. Chatbots can not only send motivational messages and celebrate achievements, but also monitor and give advice on maintaining psychological well-being. Importantly, if the situation gets more serious, AI assistants can point students to mental health support resources and hotlines, providing a crucial safety net.

Reporting on Progress and Collecting Feedback

Progress tracking is a primary driver of student motivation, so it is a crucial factor. Chatbots track progress, identify areas for improvement, and send reports to students or their teachers. Of course, these features also greatly increase the efficiency of learning. Students now know exactly where they need to do better, and their teachers can see what to help them with.

A chatbot for online learning can also collect and send feedback from students, which is the main motivation for business development. Hearing directly from the users what works for them in your service and what changes they want is invaluable. Therefore, both parties benefit at the same time.

Best Examples of Chatbots in E-Learning

Now that you know some of the most promising use cases for AI e-learning chatbots, let’s back them up with real-market case studies.

Duolingo Max’s Approach to Chatbots

A world-famous example of utilizing AI chatbots in e-learning is Duolingo. During the language studying process, each user has a virtual owl friend who communicates with them, asks about their aims, tells them about the next steps, and answers their questions.

Advanced features also include video calls with AI character Lily for low-pressure language practice simulating real-world experience and the Role Play feature, which does the same, minus the video.  

AI Chatbot for Education by CHI Software

A chatbot for educational institutions developed by CHI Software is another great showcase of what e-learning chatbots can achieve. This solution automatically evaluates students’ essays using predefined criteria and providing feedback. 

In addition, the chatbot empowers teachers to generate assessment questions for various topics, including IT, software development, and business, and customize questions for different educational purposes.

Our case also shows the real-life benefits from implementing an AI chatbot for e-learning. The solution we developed led to a great boost in students’ engagement and decreased teachers’ workload by a whopping 50%. Imagine how much more you can achieve in education with such results.  

Pearson+ AI Tutor

Another striking example is the Pearson+ AI tutor. The company has integrated artificial intelligence into its learning platforms, and now, a chatbot offers real-time problem-solving support and immediate feedback on almost any kind of assignment.

This AI chatbot for learning support will not only answer questions 24/7 about any learning material part that causes difficulties, but also create quizzes to ensure the student really gets it now. How efficient is that? 

Woebot Emotional Support Chatbot

Back in 2017, Woebot Health saw the potential of chatbots in the mental care field and created a virtual assistant that can communicate and provide sound emotional support to reduce stress and anxiety.

Using scientifically approved psychological techniques, the Woebot chatbot offers users guidance in working on their immediate emotional concerns and mental health issues. Such assistance can be of great value to students and teachers under stress.  

Knowre Math Chatbot

A chatbot from the platform Knowre Math proves that a personalized approach to education can make any difficult topic easy. This AI assistant can identify which math skills a student needs to work on and offer practice tasks to improve their score and knowledge.

And not only that. The chatbot also prioritizes interactive and fun content along with easy-to-understand explanations tailored to each user’s age. It generates engaging images and comics to make math problems more entertaining. No wonder children love using the chatbot. 

6 Steps Before Picking an E-Learning Chatbot Vendor

You’ve learned about the advantages and opportunities of using a chatbot for the e-learning industry; what’s next? The next step is selecting a reliable partner for successful implementation, so take a moment to prepare. To make the selection process easier and ensure you pick the right partner, we’ve created a handy checklist.

1. Understand Your Goals 

Before looking for a vendor, ask yourself why you need a chatbot and what issues and processes you need it to cover. Defining clear goals will help you find the right partners and subsequently speed up the chatbot development process for your future development team, as they will clearly understand your expectations.

Here are some questions you can consider:

• What is the main reason you want an AI chatbot for e-learning?
• Which business or learning outcomes should the bot help improve?
• What are the 3-5 highest-priority tasks you want the tool to handle first?
• How will you measure success?

2. Analyze Your Audience

The chatbot’s effectiveness depends on understanding who will use it. Are you targeting tech-savvy students, adult learners, or teachers? If you know your audience, you can shape your chatbot’s tone, functionality, and features.

3. Determine Your Budget

Remember that the cost to build a chatbot is not fixed. Your investment may vary greatly depending on the tool’s features and its integration ecosystem. Having a clear budget in advance will help you weed out several companies that don’t meet your financial requirements.

When budgeting, you should include long-term maintenance and upgrades, as technology, user needs, and your company all continue to evolve daily.

Pro tip: It’s a good idea to allocate a part of your budget to chatbot scaling from the start. You can begin with a conservative estimate and add a 15-25% buffer for growth or unexpected needs. Based on our experience as an educational software development company, this approach proves cheaper than emergency upgrades later.

4. Create a Map of Key Features

Think about what features your chatbot should have. Start with a list of the core features essential to your business. For example:

• Multilingual support: If your audience spans different regions, your chatbot should communicate in multiple languages in order to cater to various user groups;
• Integration with CRM: Connection to your customer database will provide valuable insights into user interactions;
• Advanced analytics: Custom reporting or data segmentation will be helpful if you want to track response time, popular questions, and engagement rates.

5. Evaluate Your Technical Ecosystem

Chatbots don’t work in isolation. You must review your current tech stack (server capacity, data storage, and security protocols) to ensure your chatbot can integrate seamlessly with your systems. Discuss this matter with your technical team.

6. Plan for Scalability

From day one of your chatbot implementation, you should keep scalability in mind, as your chatbot needs to keep up with the growth of your platform. Scalability is important when planning development because engineers need to build a chatbot architecture with a modular structure for greater flexibility, as well as using cloud computing to handle more data.

If this path seems too complicated for you, don’t worry! CHI Software is here to help you with any questions you may have. If you can’t define your audience or analyze your tech ecosystem, we are happy to introduce our IT consulting services and outstanding business analysis team.

Conclusion

You can make the learning experience much more engaging, learner-centric, and accessible anytime: AI chatbots for education turn this vision into reality and transform the way learners communicate and develop.

So, why settle for ordinary when your platform could inspire, empower, and truly connect with learners? If you are ready to begin or want to discuss more workflow details – reach out to CHI Software today and let us build a chatbot tailored to your goals.

FAQs

• What key features do the best AI assistants for e-learning have?

  We recommend considering this list of features:
  - 24/7 availability: Providing support and advice to students at any time of the day;
  - Personalized learning: Customizing learning process based on each learner's progress and needs;
  - Real-time feedback: Instant grades and suggestions on assignments, quizzes, and essays;
  - Emotional support: Sending motivational messages and helping students stay positive;
  - Administrative support: Performing routine tasks, such as tracking important deadlines, sending reminders, and assisting with course registrations.

• What are some practical examples of using AI chatbots in e-learning?

  There are several successful examples of chatbots in e-learning mentioned in our article:
  - The custom educational developed chatbot by CHI Software evaluates student essays, provides feedback, and allows teachers to create customized assessment questions in IT, software development, and business;
  - Duolingo guides learners through language lessons and provides personalized feedback;
  - Woebot offers emotional support to students;
  - Pearson+ AI tutor provides real-time problem-solving support and immediate feedback on nearly any type of assignment;
  - Knowre Math identifies skills a student needs to improve on and offers practice tasks.

• What are the limitations of using chatbots in e-learning?

  Here are several main limitations you should keep in mind:
  - Lack of deep human interaction: Remember that a chatbot is just a piece of technology and cannot replace human employees in complex or sensitive matters;
  - Limited understanding of contextual nuances: Chatbots can sometimes have difficulty understanding the context of ambiguous student queries;
  - Technical challenges: Depending on the chatbot’s concept and number of features, integrating a chatbot may require advanced technical expertise.

• What is the typical return on investment for implementing chatbots in the education industry?

  AI chatbots provide a clear return on investment (ROI) and drive improvements key metrics:
  - Enrolment conversion rate: Chatbots that engage in a screening conversation with students before enrolling in a course can increase conversion rates by 10-20%;
  - Student retention rate: With the ability to provide proactive and timely support to students through chatbots, businesses can increase retention rates by 5-15%;
  - Cost savings: Educational institutions often experience total costs savings of 20–30% on student engagement and support operations annually.

• How much time and money does it take to build an e-learning chatbot with CHI Software?

  Keep in mind that the price and timeframe for creating a chatbot for online learning depend on your requirements and the complexity of your existing technical infrastructure. For example, if you are looking for a quick solution and don't need customization just yet, a basic chatbot can fit your needs, costing USD 2,000 and taking two weeks to develop.
  
  If you need a chatbot with basic AI functions such as user personalization management, custom responses, and process analysis, the cost of implementing chatbots in e-learning will be around USD 3,000 and the development time will be a couple of months.
  
  CHI Software also offers an option to create a custom chatbot with advanced functions. Such a chatbot supports omnichannel interaction, can be combined with 2D and 3D avatars, can be integrated with ERP and CRM systems, and can handle specific interaction scenarios. Its price starts at USD 3,000+, with development time taking up to six months.
  
  As you can see, the cost of implementing chatbots in e-learning is not something set in stone, and only you can decide which price is suitable for your situation.