Abstract:

In the context of this work we designed and developed a chatbot, i.e., an online live-chat assistant, based on the information contained in the main website of the University of Patras and the way this information is organized in order to support mainly undergraduate and graduate students, who constitute the majority of the population of our academic community but also perspective students and other members of our community.

Our work has been motivated by the lack of chatbots for the main website of our university and by chatbots of other universities in Greece or abroad; it has been based on the exploitation of state-of-the-art web technologies in combination with the popularity of (mobile) electronic devices with an aim to facilitate our community to access existing information in a simple, direct and accurate way which, at the same time, contributes to the reduction of the workload of the administrative staff of the institute particularly during peak periods, such as enrolment or examination periods.

Results of this work include the design and implementation of "Patra", our chatbot, which has been implemented by means of the tidio live chat service software and has been intended to support mainly the undergraduate and graduate students of the University of Patras but also other members of our community as well as visitors to the main website of the institute; it also includes the implementation of an indicative wordpress-based website to host the “Patra” chatbot. "Patra" is responsive and user-friendly and it is currently offered in Greek and English coupled with the main website of our university in order to provide up-to-date and cross-checked information. We expect “Patra” to be useful for our academic community and attractive for members-to-be and also make a starting point for other similar applications for the institute and also for its departments or particular administrative services.

Keywords:

Chatbot, university website, student support, tidio, wordpress.