The advent of AI-powered technology, and online chatbots in particular, has boded well for numerous industries. Education, in particular, has greatly benefited from chatbot development. Education chatbots improve communication, increase productivity, and minimize ambiguity from interactions. They can thus effortlessly lend themselves to focused, result-oriented online conversations — which is precisely what modern educational institutes need in this day and age. In this article, we’ll explore 4 avenues wherein education is undergoing a sea change thanks to AI bots.
1. Accessibility of website information:
University websites see traffic all year round. To begin with, potential applicants visit them to gauge the quality and viability of their offered courses. Further down the road, serious applicants seek information on fee structures, scholarships, and course specifics. As the academic year progresses, numerous other deadlines, courses, seminars, and administrative exercises present themselves, requiring students to visit the university website in search of information.
In addition to this, university websites carry other kinds of information that students don’t actively search for, but could benefit from. For instance, scholarships and select internship programs often take voluntary applications, which an eligible student might not submit if they’re unaware of the existence of these programs.
As such, universities must optimize their websites in a way that the information they contain is always easily accessible to students. Building chatbots for these websites is the ideal way forward. Educational chatbots create a friendly interface between a university website and its visitors. By answering a wide variety of questions about academic, administrative and financial matters, and giving out important reminders and notifications directly through the chat window, chatbots ensure that any information present on a university’s website is available 24/7 to its students.
2. Simplification of administrative formalities:
Facilitating information access and retrieval is the first step in a series of tasks that education chatbots are mandated to perform. They also have a major role to play in simplifying the administrative formalities that are part and parcel of enrolling at an educational institute.
To begin with, the admissions process itself entails a significant amount of paperwork, which includes filling and submitting forms, taking online tests, furnishing certificates and referrals, and making fee payments. Through each of these processes, potential students have a variety of doubts and questions. They are not always located near the university, nor do they have the time to file their queries and complaints via emails or phone calls. University website chatbots become indispensable in these situations.
Universities that create a chatbot for their websites, give potential and existing students a free and accessible point of contact for all their questions and complaints. Instead of figuring out who to ask about a specific section of the application form, a specific clause in the eligibility criteria for admission, or the various tuition fee funding options available, students can just type their queries into the website’s live chat window. A lot of these questions tend to be asked by new students every year, so with careful chatbot development, universities can address the bulk of these pre-admission queries through their automated chat script itself. For queries that are more complex or specific, the chatbot can register a ticket on the student’s behalf, or give them information on who to contact for assistance.
3. Familiarizing students with the university’s culture:
An effective onboarding process doesn’t just involve answering students’ questions during the pre-enrollment stage. New students also look to understand the academic environment and campus culture of the universities they’re shortlisting. Once again, online chatbots can help dispense this information to potential students.
The best chatbots for university websites often present carefully crafted menus that invite the visitor to select options like “What makes us one of the top 10 universities in the country”, or “Discover life at <University>”. They are also programmed to answer frequently asked questions about course structures, campus facilities, extra-curricular activities, and so on. As such, by building chatbots for their websites, universities can effectively get their messages across to their target audience, which includes both potential students and their parents.
4. Technical support and troubleshooting assistance:
After on-boarding students and introducing them to campus life, university chatbots can continue to play the role of virtual assistants for sundry online tasks. Some of the world’s best chatbots for university websites double up as virtual tech support personnel, helping students troubleshoot problems with university software, email accounts, and so on. Their chat scripts often incorporate software tutorials that students can process easily on account of the simple question-and-answer format of the interaction.
Education isn’t the only sector undergoing a revolution, courtesy chatbot development.
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