Even before the coronavirus hit, the University of Hawai’i Maui College was looking for ways to improve its communication with students and their parents. As a commuter school, UHMC must take extra strides in this area, as compared to colleges whose students live on campus. But with most classes moving to online-only, communication became of greater importance, as in-person interactions on campus had previously been where much college-related news was shared.
Thankfully, UHMC had already begun working with Ocelot, an AI (artificial intelligence) chatbot and video platform that several other schools had reported helped improve communications between the institution and its students. But, these times being as unprecedented as they are, Ocelot has certainly helped ameliorate matters.
Here’s a quick background on Ocelot, an out-of-the-box third-party software that was rebranded and customized for UHMC as Ulu. Throughout the UHMC website, features of the software can be found, most noticeably chatbots — small chat boxes that can intuit basic phrases to provide users with answers and links to more information. UHMC identified several areas where students and their parents were feeling lost and that the technology offered could help improve those areas.
Since implementing Ulu, UHMC has seen a drastic improvement in the following areas.
1. Clarity Regarding Fall Enrollment
Many students and incoming freshmen have jobs, meaning they have limited hours when they can make it to campus or those hours don’t align to when the campus departments are open. With Ulu, students who visited popular portions of the UHMC website were greeted with other ways to get the information they desired. Those who visited the financial aid section of the site, for example, were greeted with the Ulu chatbot in the lower-right corner. That meant that questions could be asked and answered around the clock, easing the burden on both students and department staff (who were already coping with the rigors of moving a college to be entirely online).
Because the software had already been field-tested at other colleges, UHMC was given a predefined list of commonly asked questions, which could then be customized for our students. The Ulu chatbot recognizes numerous ways these questions can be phrased — e.g., How do I apply for financial aid? Is financial aid available? Where do I find financial aid forms? — and provides the user with the best possible response. In many cases, even if our staff were available to field these questions, they wouldn’t be able to do so as efficiently as Ulu does.
And Ulu even takes it a step further. Questions that require more in-depth answers are often accompanied by explanatory videos. Try visiting the UHMC Financial Aid page and typing “How do I fill out the FAFSA?” into the chatbot. Several options are given, including a 50-second video on what the FAFSA is.
2. Greater Equity for Remote Learning
As I mentioned in my post about the challenges of distance learning, not every student has the same access to online education. Even though most every institution of higher learning offers free internet access to its students, that only applies on campus. At home, not everyone has access to the internet — and that’s not always because of economic regions: Some parts of Hawai’i have accessibility issues due to infrastructure and topography.
And then there’s the educational component itself. On campus, students had access to The Learning Center (TLC), which provides academic support services such as tutoring, study-skills instructions, and testing services. We knew that many students relied on TLC for these services, so we wanted to make sure they still had access, even when the on-campus building was closed.
Through Ulu, we continued to provide students with these different academic support services, including placement tests for incoming freshmen and transfers. The application also made it possible for students to borrow laptops and access research guides.
3. Increased Overall Communication
As a commuter school, we have always found communication to be one of our biggest challenges, but technology has certainly helped. In addition to email newsletters and social media, the sitewide chatbot provides answers that some students may have missed in our other communication methods. A search for “When are applications due?”, for example, provides several different options:
So even though the first option most likely would have provided the answer the user is looking for, the other options not only might help but could provide information about topics the user didn’t even know they needed, such as the fact that there are separate application processes for residency and admission.
Ulu is not simply a measure put in place due to the pandemic. The benefits of the technology have been so great that UHMC plans to continue using it even after in-person classes and other campus activities resume as normal.