MentorBot: A Traceability-Based Recommendation Chatbot for Moodle

E-learning platforms are excellent educational exchange and sharing environments. They are accessible everywhere and offer several advantages such as flexibility, consistency, profitability, improvement, and the possibility of designing rich digital content. E-learning services are an interactive way of communication and are available to learners anytime and anywhere in the world using the internet. Nowadays, they have been more and more engaged, mainly due to the recent pandemic, and because of that, the number of resources and students is still increasing. Consequently, as these platforms aim to provide learners with more personalized individual learning, suggesting the most suitable items for learners is now a complicated task, even for experienced tutors; since each learner has its own learning style and interests, and the process of recommending resources needs a considerable amount of time. This paper introduces “MentorBot”; a recommendation chatbot prototype, which uses traceability (using personalized models) as its primary technique for computing suggestions. The prototype can provide a rich conversational experience, trace learners’ behaviors, and offer adequate academic resources in real-time. MentorBot is integrated with Moodle and can be accessed through a floating web widget, throughout the whole platform. Our goal is to reduce the workload and free tutors from repetitive tasks while promoting the use of chatbots in learners’ everyday life.