SeoulTech Begins Testing of Chatbot System

Able to process multiple queries 24/7 and administrative tasks

SeoulTech introduced its smart administrative community system chatbot on October 15th.

Chatbots are a type of messenger that provide answers to user queries using artificial intelligence on an institution’s website and many universities including Danguk University and Kyunghee University as well as various corporations and national institutions have implemented such services. The implementation of a chatbot by SeoulTech is the first time it has been used by a national university. 

The Information Processing Center will continue to monitor the chatbot system during its pilot testing phase and fix any deviations and errors that occur. The main areas of service that are to be offered are information regarding national scholarships, academic events, SeoulTech cafeteria menus, contact information for different departments, building location and information administrative services such as webmail, Wi-Fi, public IP, public SW and others.

The SeoulTech Information Processing Center originally planned to continue development of its chatbot system over a three-year period. However, it has combined the first and second-year plans and is expected to finish development in 2020. A chatbot system is software that can interact with humans and chat in the desired language. The first-year plan for the chatbot system involved providing simple documentation services, whereas the second-year plan was to add the integrated information system access capabilities provided through the Smart Campus application. The third-year plan is expected to add speech recognition and further integrated information system access capabilities; however, this is still in discussion.

The Information Processing Center is currently focused on accuracy. As the purpose of the chatbot is to provide information, the present target is on precisely understanding the needs of the user and the supplying of correct answers. The pilot testing service will allow developers to monitor questions from students and answers given by the chatbot and continuously find points of improvement. As such, the accuracy of the chatbot will be known by students using the service during the pilot testing period. If the chatbot does not provide an accurate answer to a query, students can report problems. 

Information Processing Center Representative Kim Yoon Jung said, “We do not expect the chatbot to have all of the advanced features from the beginning, and we ask students to help us in the process of making the chatbot more accurate as time is necessary in stabilizing the application in its initial stages.”

The SeoulTech chatbot service is expected to officially launch in February 2020, and students wishing to use the chatbot can access it through chatbot.seoultech.ac.kr. Access is also granted through the SeoulTech website and portal sites as well as the Smart Campus app.