Events

Digital Universities Europe

Well-being Leadership in Higher Education

Thad Mantaro (PhD) serves as the Dean of Student Wellbeing at Dallas College in Texas. He earned his doctorate from Texas Tech University with a dissertation titled “Wellbeing Leadership in Higher Education: A Collective Case Study of Chief Wellness Officers.” In his dissertation, Mantaro examined the role of the Chief Wellness Officer (CWO) in student wellbeing efforts across six campuses in the United States. In this webinar, Mantaro discussed topics such as student services in the U.S. higher education system, leadership in student wellbeing, and opportunities for international collaboration and research related to student wellbeing.

LAK24

ECSAS23

Rapid advancements in AI have provided unprecedented possibilities to personalize learning processes. Limited attention has been paid to students' conceptions of AI. This study explores the role of an AI agent in facilitating students' help-seeking process. The study will increase the understanding of AI agents as support for learners. Findings will help identify issues that future studies should focus on in order to develop transparent and ethically grounded use of AI in education, in line with learning theories.

ECSAS22

"Recognizing students’ worries and needs with an SMS-based support bot
This workshop will introduce a novel method of proactively recognizing students' worries and needs with an SMS-based support bot. During the workshop, participants get an overview of research on novel technologies (e.g. AI, chatbots) for well-being support, get acquainted with designing scalable support chatbot scripts aimed at recognizing students' needs, and learn about the experiences and results of using a support chatbot in a university context."

HCI21

Chatbots show promise as a novel way to provide support to students. However, a central issue with new technologies such as chatbots is whether students trust the technology. In the present study, we use a chatbot to proactively offer academic and non-academic support to students (N = 274) in a Finnish vocational education and training (VET) organization. Students responded to the chatbot with a very high response rate (86%), and almost one-fifth (19%) of the respondents disclosed a need for support. Survey with a subset of participants (N = 49) showed satisfactory trust (total trust score 71% as measured by a human-computer trust scale) and satisfaction (average of 3.83 as measured by a five-point customer satisfaction instrument) with the chatbot. Trust was positively correlated with satisfaction as well as students’ likelihood to respond to the chatbot. Our results show that this kind of approach is applicable for recognizing students’ latent needs for support. Future studies should target the formation of trust in more detail and cultural differences in trusting chatbots.