As the need for educating traditional and non-traditional students increases and budgets decrease, the demand for higher education institutions to implement creative ways to provide effective customer service to students has never been more critical.
This research studied the potential implementation of an Agent for Interactive Student Assistance (AISA) application in Bowling Green State University’s (BGSU’s) College of Technology and its impact on student engagement and recruitment. AISA is defined as an interactive, human-like, avatar-based online student assistance application with voice and text recognition that provides answers to students’ administrative-related most frequently asked questions. The avatar-based application would provide cognitive responses using voice and non-verbal communication with a 90% accuracy rate.
BGSU College of Technology undergraduate and graduate students during the 2009/2010 and 2010/2011 academic years were the population of this study consisting of 940 students. The approach of this study was quantitative, post positivist with an expected outcome in the form of an alternate hypothesis tested against a null hypothesis. One survey was administered to the population with a response rate of 9%.
Favorable results were found with 91% of students indicating they would or may use an AISA application if provided the opportunity. One proportion z tests showed that, overall, students would not experience a negative impact on engagement and BGSU’s College of Technology would not experience a decrease in new students.