Besides EBA Asistan, MEB Asistan, the second AI-based virtual assistant we launched in partnership with the Ministry of National Education, helps students, teachers, parents and everyone who wants to ask questions to the Ministry.

Why MEB Asistan?

On the global scale, we see that the education field is an important area in which artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have a serious potential. According to a study by MarketsandMarkets, the global size of the artificial intelligence market used in education, is estimated to reach $ 3.68 billion by 2023, which was $ 538 million in 2018. This means a CAGR of 47%. In other words, we can assert that the AI technologies will penetrate the education sector very rapidly.

Aligned with this trend, the Turkish Republic Ministry of National Education has been focusing on the integration of AI to empower the education system for a long time. In February, the Ministry introduced Turkey’s remote education system EBA (Education & Information Network) after the outbreak of Covid19. EBA Asistan has responded to over 10 million questions from 3 million unique users within the first 5 weeks and had a position as a virtual assistant that had answered the highest number of questions ever not only in Turkey but also on the global scale, in such a short period. 

Proving such an achievement with EBA Assistant, we developed MEB Asistan putting the citizens that ask questions to the Ministry at the center of everything –  to make their lives easier. Let’s meet MEB Asistan, that we have launched in partnership with the Ministry of Education and explained its capabilities together with Mr. Minister Ziya Selçuk at a press conference in August 2020.

What is MEB Asistan?

MEB Asistan is a digital assistant that answers everyone who wants to ask questions to the Ministry of National Education. The most important advantage of the Assistant is that users can instantly access the information 7/24 they are looking for without navigating the site or browsing through different menus. Thanks to MEB Asistan, students, teachers, parents and all stakeholders involved in the national education system can find answers to their questions on many topics, from scholarship to overseas assignments, from Mimistry legislation to Open Education, from Ministry legislation to exams and assignments, by writing their statement as if they are chatting with a live agent. It is possible to reach MEB Asistan, which ensures the Ministry of National Education to be accessible anywhere and anytime, on the official website of the ministry, meb.gov.tr.

What is the technology behind it?

We implemented MEB Asistan by working in cooperation with ministry officials. The Assistant was developed with the possibilities of CBOT natural language processing and machine learning technologies, so it provides a much better user experience than rule-based chatbots. Natural language processing technology enables the assistant to interpret natural statements like a human and provide an accurate response. In other words, even when a question is asked as if chatting with someone, the Assistant can understand and answer it. Machine learning technology makes it possible for the system to be continuously trained with new questions. In addition, thanks to our advanced AI technology, two virtual assistants, EBA Asistan and MEB Asistan, can also communicate to each other.

The assistant positioned on the website of the Ministry of National Education crawls the content published by the Ministry from the relevant websites while answering the questions and can provide the most up-to-date information to the user in case of any updates.

Who is the target audience? Which questions does it answer? 

MEB Asistan can be used by students, teachers, parents, national education staff and all citizens who want to ask any question to the Ministry of National Education. For example, when a teacher wants to get information about assignments abroad, it is enough to ask the MEB Asistan; or a student can instantly access information and directions about equivalence procedures; or a parent can access his/her kid’s BİLSEM exam result by asking MEB Asistan without searching through a website.

Scholarship and equivalence procedures, exams, schools, assignments abroad, master’s degree abroad, ministry legislation, tenders, projects, content and distribution of school books, professional counselling for teachers, special education, courses, EBA, open education are the most prominent topics of the MEB Asistan for the initial phase.

What is next?

We see that the Ministry of National Education has an awareness about the importance of building an advanced AI infrastructure for digital transformation. Thanks to this awareness, we started to work on our second AI-based virtual assistant, MEB Asistan, just after the launch of EBA Assistant. We observe that both EBA Assistant and MEB Asistan, which we have developed with our advanced machine learning and NLP technologies, are massively used by students, teachers, parents and employees of the ministry. MEB Asistan answered 500 thousand questions from 300 thousand people in the first 6 weeks. These figures show that the citizens also demand to adopt digital transformation and AI in every aspect of their lives. We believe that MEB Asistan will set another usage record.

The Ministry of National Education announced that they are working on the 2020-2040 artificial intelligence strategy document and planning to roll out the capabilities of this technology to every process of the Ministry. As CBOT, we will continue to create value with our AI technology and the power of Turkish engineers for the education of our children and youth – the future of our country.

Please check out the video on MEB Asistan.

Please check out our blog post to learn more about EBA Asistan.