Review of Usage and Potentials of Conversational Interfaces at Universities and in Students Daily Lifes

Authors: Lea Kisser, Matthias Busch, Ingo Siegert

Abstract:

The continuous advancement of digitization extends beyond educational institutions, giving rise to numerous innovations, particularly in the realm of study information [1]. One avenue for incorporating digital methodologies involves leveraging conversational agents (CAs) [2], serving as interactive interfaces bridging the gap between humans and computers. In the broader context, conversational agents are gaining prominence, offering several benefits to their users. The overarching goal is to comprehensively assist users through these intelligent systems. Consequently, exploring existing university chatbots becomes imperative to discern the areas where they excel. This research aims to scrutinize diverse chatbot systems, delving into their use cases and the challenges they encounter, employing a systematic review. Here it turns out that chatbots support universities the most in the fields of administration, e-learning and mental health. Furthermore, the study will investigate practical experiences on the potential applications and implementation of these systems in university settings, incorporating insights from an online survey and interviews, both made with experts. Here it comes to conclusion that preparation in relation to a chatbot implementation is the key factor to success. Otherwise, a failed system is nearly impossible to be saved, once users lost trust in the system. Therefore, carefully made preparations in the technical and organisational field are necessary to provide a helpful assistant.