Moodle eLearning Chatbot Home
PSI’s Moodle eLearning Chatbot delivers an eLearning experience over a text-based chatbot using Moodle’s course activities as the eLearning algorithm. The chatbot also supports student registration and course enrollment.
Population Services International (PSI) is a public health NGO that works with Ministries of Health (MoHs) and other local partners in Low and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs). In addition to direct delivery of health services, PSI provides technical training to health workers on various health topics. We use a mix of approaches to deliver the content, including Moodle web, Moodle mobile app, and WhatsApp via the Moodle eLearning chatbot app, which you will learn about in this space. Our objective is to meet learners where they are on a platform they already use.
The Moodle eLearning Chatbot is designed to support developing nation students and learners who lack access to traditional educational forums. It was initially developed to support community health workers, case managers, and other frontline health workers to provide them with critical knowledge and skill building through an accessible and familiar app in their context, in this case, WhatsApp. The application has gone through multiple rounds of field-tested usage with end users to ensure that it met the requirements to make it successful for adoption.
Trained users on WhatsApp | Courses in WhatsApp | Prefers WA courses vs. web/app courses |
|---|---|---|
4,000+ | 4 | 77% |
User-based: Health Workers in Nigeria & Kenya, 2020-2023 | ||
Since its launch in 2020, over 4,000 health workers from Kenya and Nigeria have taken WhatsApp-based Moodle eLearning courses on COVID-19 and Sexual and Reproductive Health. The approach allows users to learn at their own pace and convenience without using a web-based eLearning platform. As measured by learners’ feedback surveys, 77% of interviewed health workers prefer WhatsApp to other eLearning platforms.
Moodle eLearning Chatbot Architecture
The chatbot is a .net app that requires Moodle 4.1 or greater and an associated Moodle plugin. The plugin exposes various functions required by the chatbot .net app. Additionally, it adds user and course properties. The app currently supports WhatsApp via Twilio. A future release will support direct connection via Meta’s API to support Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp directly. Other chat platforms can be easily added as part of the open-source project.
The chatbot currently supports the following Moodle processes:
User registration via WhatsApp
Enrollment for Moodle courses marked as chatbot-enabled
The following course activities:
Lesson,
Feedback,
Quiz &
Certificate (requires Custom certificate plugin)