Abstract:

At University Degrees, students must be the core of their own teaching-learning process; and foreign students, who come to our international degree programs in Spain to realize one year of their university studies also. Nevertheless, first, these foreign students need to be incorporated and included in the style and culture of our country and university system.

Universities have international programs to offer facilities to get a flat, the travel to our town and to give them welcome when they arrive at our cities. However, there are some common activities that foreign students need to do, which are not offered from those university programs.

Some real examples of these questions are the following. Going to buy food, clothes (if they don’t have the specific clothes adapted to our weather), doctor, hospital, and even hairdresser (I had the case of African students who couldn’t find a specialist hairdresser in a city as Valladolid, which is not too large to offer that service), cannot be responded at all from University international students service.
Information and Communication Tools (ICT) allow us to automate the management and attention of these common and top-level questions that require both, time and human and economic resources. Therefore, we have implemented an ICT tool that aims to be a fast, simple, clear and efficient response procedure for this type of questions.

As the mobile phone is the most used electronic device by our students, we thought to offer a solution for it. After an analysis about different options, we decide to apply an ICT called chatbot, so, we have designed and developed a chatbot tool specifically for the aim of this work.

In addition, we included information about other questions related to schedules of different buildings at University, classes, laboratories, tutoring, subjects and exams. The objective is to give them in a quick and simple way all the relevant information to involve them in the University as soon as possible.

Our chatbot tool simulates two-way communication with a human agent to answer questions. However, the system is fully computer-based and automatic, which means that a machine is responding (software program) and it operates autonomously, without requiring the intervention of a human operator. In addition, our tool can help them anytime and anywhere. As foreign students belong to an international program, which requires learning in English language, we have designed and implemented the chatbot tool in English too.

The function of coaching by chatbot of all this foreign students for starting their studies at our Spanish university, an Engineering School, and for helping with some domestic questions as supermarkets, typical shops, culture activities, museums, hairdresser, hospitals, and others, is valued as necessary and positive from these students.

Keywords:

Information and Communication Tool (ICT), tool, coaching, chatbot, foreign students.