QuizBot: A Dialogue-based Adaptive Learning System for Factual Knowledge

Advances in conversational AI have the potential to enable more engaging and effective ways to teach factual knowledge. To investigate this hypothesis, we created QuizBot, a dialogue-based agent that helps students learn factual knowledge in science, safety, and English vocabulary. We evaluated QuizBot with 76 students through two within-subject studies against a flashcard app, the traditional medium for learning factual knowledge. Though both systems used the same algorithm for sequencing materials, QuizBot led to students recognizing (and recalling) over 20% more correct answers than when students used the flashcard app. Using a conversational agent is more time consuming to practice with; but in a second study, of their own volition, students spent 2.6x more time learning with QuizBot than with flashcards and reported preferring it strongly for casual learning. Our results in this second study showed QuizBot yielded improved learning gains over flashcards on recall. These results suggest that educational chatbot systems may have beneficial use, particularly for learning outside of traditional settings.