The Use of Chatbots in Energy Education
Othman BENMALEK, Nasr-eddine JABARI, Khaoula BENMOUSSA, Moulay Driss EL OUADGHIRI
Abstract. Since the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in educational contexts has increased rapidly, there has been a surge in the use of chatbots as interactive agents of learning in education. Recently, chatbots have shown great promise for providing engagement, access, and personalized learning in a variety of academic and non-academic fields. In the area of energy education, there are unique benefits that can be found because energy education is an applied, interdisciplinary, and technical area of scholarship with a focus on sustainability and climate change. This literature review examines the current literature regarding the use of chatbots in education and explores the potential uses of chatbots for energy education. Some of the benefits provided by chatbots include increased access and personalized learning methods, while challenges related to chatbots include limited levels of reasoning ability, reliability of data, and ethical considerations. Furthermore, a technical case study demonstrates the creation of a Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) chatbot using 267 curated documents for Energy Education. Initial testing (n=6) achieved 100% accuracy with instantaneous response times, showcasing the potential for providing domain-specific answers on topics related to the renewable energy sector, efficient use of energy, and sustainability. The literature review concludes with a focus on future improvements for using chatbots to provide enhanced levels of natural language processing (NLP) and adapt to learner needs in order to enhance energy literacy and sustainability education.
Keywords
Chatbots, RAG, Artificial Intelligence, Energy Education, Educational Technology, Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS)
Published online 4/25/2026, 7 pages
Copyright © 2026 by the author(s)
Published under license by Materials Research Forum LLC., Millersville PA, USA
Citation: Othman BENMALEK, Nasr-eddine JABARI, Khaoula BENMOUSSA, Moulay Driss EL OUADGHIRI, The Use of Chatbots in Energy Education, Materials Research Proceedings, Vol. 64, pp 440-446, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21741/9781644904091-55
The article was published as article 55 of the book Energy Futures
Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.
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