Custom chatbots are just starting to see their full potential tapped by a myriad of businesses in many different sectors. This is especially true in the eLearning sector as administrators are beginning to realize how these automated instant messaging tools can streamline customer service and provide a valuable resource to the learners using their product.

Chatbots are a fantastic way to answer Frequently Asked Questions for users without having to expend added labor costs to have someone on-call to answer them. They’re also a nascent, untapped resource when it comes to being used within the framework of a college course to assist in the teaching process. 

It’s actually a pretty intuitive process to create your own custom chatbot for your eLearning higher education course. You’ll need to start free accounts for three different services to begin:

• Skype in order to create a unique chat channel.
• BotFramework to construct the chatbot itself.
• QnAMaker to build a knowledge base for the chatbot to draw from.

Constructing A Custom Knowledge Base For Your Chatbot

Within the QnAMaker interface, you’ll click on the create new service button to name your chatbot. From there, you can add any URL with a list of Frequently Asked Questions for the chatbot to draw from. If you don’t have a webpage for FAQs, don’t fret! You can just upload a simple word document with a list of questions and answers for the chatbot to learn.

After you click the Create button, you’ll be shown a comprehensive list in-app of the questions and answers your chatbot will respond to. This will allow you to verify that you have all of the questions and answers you need.

If not, you can click the Add New Pair button to add more question and answer pairings. Not only can this be used for FAQs, but you can also anticipate what learners will ask about a certain subject and use it as an automated teaching mechanism!

These chatbots are as useful as you make them. The more you feed them and the more you anticipate, the better they can serve your student populace.

How To Put Your Chatbot Into Motion

Once you’ve got the knowledge base loaded in, click Publish in QnAMaker to receive a knowledge base ID number and a subscription key. Write these down.

You’ll then move over to BotFramework and select the Questions and Answers bot template, changing it from Basic.

Microsoft has begun the process of fully migrating all of its BotFramework services to be hosted on their Azure Portal. So, you’ll have to access your own Azure portal and open your bot app.

There, you’ll enter the knowledge base ID numbers and subscription key you wrote down earlier.

Once that is done, go to your bot settings in your Azure portal. Under Bot Management, select Channels. Click on Skype and use the add function to connect it as your chatbot’s service of choice. Secure your Chatbot ID in your Azure Portal, under Bot Management>Application Settings>MicrosoftAppId.

Finally, to embed your chatbot on your eLearning page, place the following code somewhere in the .html for the particular page you want the chatbot to be embedded upon:

• <div class=”skype-button bubble” data-bot-id=“Chatbot ID”></div> <script src=”https://swc.cdn.skype.com/sdk/v1/sdk.min.js“></script>

And there you go! Now you have an eLearning chatbot which can answer as many questions as you need to service your learners’ needs!

Conclusion

There are so many ways that a bot can help you and your students. By taking the time and creating a bot, you could be saving your team members time, which saves you money. It’s definitely worth it!