ERIC Number: EJ1392671
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2023-Jul
Pages: 12
Abstractor: As Provided
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EISSN: EISSN-1545-679X
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Managing Graduate Student Advisement Questions during a Season of Explosive Growth: Development and Testing of an Advising Chatbot
Mitra, Reshmi; Schwieger, Dana; Lowe, Robert
Information Systems Education Journal, v21 n3 p12-23 Jul 2023
Many universities have, or are facing, the task of providing high quality essential customer services with fewer financial and human resources. The growing diversity of students, their needs and proficiencies, along with the increasing variety of university program offerings, make providing customized, ondemand, automated solutions crucial to delivering high quality customer service. In this paper, the authors describe the development of an artificial intelligence-backed chatbot to aid in answering student advisement questions. The main objective of the chatbot is to provide 24/7 supplemental program specific advising assistance to graduate computer science majors to lessen the advising load of university faculty. In this paper, the authors describe the development of a chatbot prototype using IBM Watson Assistant running on a specially designed website and Slack platform to address frequently asked questions of computer science graduate students. Results of a pilot study conducted on 99 graduate students indicate that the prototype is a positive step forward in making student advising accessible, usable, and scalable to a broader audience.
Descriptors: Universities, Academic Advising, Artificial Intelligence, Faculty Workload, Graduate Students, Computer Science Education, Majors (Students), Computer Software, Usability, Web Sites, Natural Language Processing, Learning Analytics, Student Needs
Information Systems and Computing Academic Professionals. Box 488, Wrightsville Beach, NC 28480. e-mail: publisher@isedj.org; Web site: http://isedj.org
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
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Language: English
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