The Role of Social Presence in MOOC Students' Behavioral Intentions and Sentiments Toward the Usage of a Learning Assistant Chatbot: A Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Perspective Examination

Improving social presence has been popularly researched for massive open online courses (MOOCs). Despite this, little consideration has been given to how students intend to utilize new technology from a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) standpoint. In this study, we examined the role of social presence in diverse MOOC students’ behavioral intentions and sentiments toward using a learning assistant chatbot. Considering potentially disparate perceptions of the technology depending on the students’ demographic factors (age, gender, region, and native language), we investigated the relationships among their social presence, age, behavioral intentions (before and after use), sentiment levels, and numbers of turn-takings with the chatbot. The investigation showed positive and moderate correlations between social presence and post-behavioral intention and between social presence and pre-behavioral intention. Also, the sentiment and social presence toward the chatbot turned out to be different according to the students’ region factor based on 13 different geographical categorizations. The native language factor was also influential in creating different sentiment levels between native and non-native English user groups. The findings implicate the importance of promoting a better understanding of the role of social presence in students’ learning experiences with AI-based applications from a DEI perspective. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.