In 2013, the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), the world’s largest professional organization for researching and teaching composition, from writing to new media, established a number of guiding principles for effective Online Writing Instruction (OWI). The CCCC Principles  are a set of operating principles divided in five sections: 1) overarching principle, 2) instructional principles, 3) faculty principles, 4) institutional principles, and 5) research principles. 

The overarching principle or first principle of OWI is that “Online Writing Instruction should be universally inclusive and accessible” (CCCC, 2013). This principle emphasizes the needs of learners with physical disabilities, learning disabilities, multilingual backgrounds and learning challenges related to socioeconomic issues in an OWI environment. As Borgman and McArdle (2020) suggest, the conception of accessibility in a writing course should move beyond Americans with Disabilities Act type of issues to include anything that might impede students (p.37). In Paamsongre Courseware, OWI Principle 1 is met in several ways, which are its design, its multimodal content delivery, and its cost

An online learning platform with good navigation, a feature of accessibility, improves student engagement as they can concentrate more on the content and learning in lieu of trying to determine what to do next. While a well-structured and designed navigation helps reduce clutter as well as the presentational complexity of a course, this feature does not eliminate the learning curve of using a new platform.  It always takes some time for users to figure out the platform’s organization. 

As evidenced by my 4-year experience using Paamsongre Courseware at SAU, there are always many student questions the first few weeks of the semester. These  questions span from determining  platform navigation and assignment due dates, locating course assignments, lectures, activities, calendar, and syllabus,  submitting assignments, to verifying whether assignments have been successfully submitted. As the semester progresses, not only do the volume of questions decreases, but their nature also shifts into more content-related questions. 

The chat box component of Paamsongre Courseware, introduced earlier, constitutes the main route for students to ask questions and have them answered. This feature has significantly improved communication between students and the instructor in that it is not only accessible on every course page enabling students to ask questions with a click, but it is also accessible on multiple devices (laptop, desktop, smartphone) on the instructor’s end, which shortens the response time. Its instant messaging (IM) characteristic enables students to see if the instructor is online and vice versa. It also enables the instructor to know from which page a student has initiated the chat enabling answering questions with more precision. Fundamentally, the chat feature in Paamsongre Courseware generates instantaneous communication making it easier for students to have their questions answered and clarify points of confusion. 

Although the chat component has been very helpful in handling student questions in a timely manner, its main limitations are that: 

• The instructor is not available 24/7 to answer questions. 
• The reaction time, although shorter than emails’, could still prevent some students from moving as fast as they would like because the instructor could be busy and not be able to answer questions right away. 

To address these two main limitations of the Paamsongre Courseware chat system and unintendedly address other general shortcomings of online learning – lack of instant communication, lack of timely feedback, course navigation issues,  unclear instructions and expectations –  the next logical opportunity in Paamsongre Courseware is the the adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Chatbots.

Chatbots are one of the latest and trendy educational technologies with artificial intelligence. They are virtual agents endowed with speech or text capabilities programmed to simulate conversations in a scripted way (Rouse, 2017). Education AI Chatbots are primarily used for assisting students with platform navigation or course content concerns by generating as suitable and timely a response as possible to inputted text or speech through Natural Language Processing (NLP) and deep machine learning (Nieves, 2018). 

There are many advantages to using Chatbots in an online learning environment. The first of these advantages is that students do not have to wait for hours for their instructors’ responses as chatbots can provide them with instantaneous, scaffolded support. Unlike teachers who have a limited online presence, chatbots are available 24/7 to answer student questions. The use of Chatbots can be expanded to triggering conversations with students, encouraging them to performing better, providing them with useful tips and insights, and reminding them not to slack off via push-notifications.  As such, chatbots reduce students’ frustration and wait time for teacher responses and mostly importantly help them become independent learners. 

On the teacher’s end, chatbots are big time savers as they can be programed to answer frequently occurring questions hence saving instructors from having to answer repetitive questions about course content, assignment due dates, and specific resource location. Ultimately, AI chatbot integration within online learning platforms allows teachers to provide education rather than IT support to students’ queries, which also addresses CCCC (2013) Principle 2: “an online writing course should focus on writing and not on technological orientation or teaching students how to use learning and other technologies.”