CSM: a Chatbot Solution to Manage Student Questions About payments and Enrollment In University

Abstract

Students at the University of Guayaquil pursuing a degree in software engineering who struggle to obtain information on enrollment and tuition payments are the target audience for the application developed in this study. To do this, a chatbot is proposed. It uses Machine Learning (ML) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to answer student's questions. To evaluate the ease of use of the system from a quantitative point of view, the time used by 6 students to complete user registration (T1), make five searches (T2), and unsubscribe (T3), was measured in minutes, with an average duration of three minutes for each activity. To assess the students' perception with the use of the proposed chatbot, a sample of sixty students who had previously interacted with the proposed solution. Aspects assessed included: Ease of use of the system (A), speed (B), appropriate behavior (C), confidence to use it again (D), and quality of the answer provided (E). Each evaluated characteristic (A-E) was rated above 3 out of 5 in most cases. Thus, the chatbot solution achieved good acceptance by students, even considering its use in future academic semesters.