Can rule-based educational chatbots be an acceptable alternative for students in higher education?

The purpose of this study was to investigate student perceptions and acceptance of a rule-based educational chatbot in higher education, employing the TAM (Technology Acceptance Model) framework. The researchers developed a rule-based chatbot for this purpose and examined the students' technology acceptance using qualitative research methods. Therefore, the study was design-based research using qualitative research methods. The participants of the study comprised 22 students studying in the Science Teaching program of Trakya University Faculty of Education and enrolled in the Modern Physics Course in the 2021–2022 fall semester. The research revealed that students' technology acceptance towards rule-based chatbots was high, even though these chatbots had technological limitations when compared to machine learning or deep learning-based ones. The students found rule-based chatbots to be useful, especially in terms of response quality, information quality, and access. Additionally, some technical details and open-source codes were also presented in the study, which can be a guide for rule-based chatbots to be designed for other areas of education.