An E-learning Bot for Bioprocess Systems Engineering

Abstract Receiving an engineering education is not a smooth path and in the last years, several digital platforms have been developed with the aim to help the students in the field. Nonetheless, the initial efforts to use digital platforms have not yet been successful, partly due to the lack of support to the teachers, the lack of motivation strategies inside the platforms or the loss of the social interaction, which is key in a collaborative learning process. Collaborative learning integrates the interaction between the students and the teacher, or in the case of digital learning, with an educational software. However, it is difficult to provide such a frame of interaction between learners inside an educational software. Therefore, a chatbot is proposed with its own design and architecture which behaves like a “friend” or colleague in the education, here applied to bioprocesses. Along with the chatbot architecture, it is explained how it is integrated in the learning design through its database. This tailored database contains training example dialogs through questions raised by students from a course on Bioprocess Technology, while it also collects their common mistakes, etc. Moreover, this database contains a novel system of twin databases; one with correct information and another with small errors. Using this system, the chatbot provides a more accurate representation of a learner’s peer and triggers critical thinking. Finally, the chatbot architecture is embedded inside a prototype open-source Educational Virtual Bioprocess Plant developed by the Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering of the Technical University of Denmark, called FermProc.