A Written Proposal on University Enquiry Chatbot

By:

AKINOLA SAMSON DAMILARE

Matric Number:

216202015
Award/course:

BSc Computer Science

Supervisor:

MRS AKANO VICTORA

Introduction
University Enquiry Chatbot uses machine learning concepts to have conversations with humans.
The purpose of developing this project is based on an intellectual chatbot system that will deal
with academic activities like admission inquiry, fee structure, scholarship details, timetable of
every department, details of the documents required to attach, etc. With this chatbot system, it
will be easy for the student to directly clear their queries in lesser time. Chatbots typically
provide a text-based user interface, allowing the user to type commands and receive a text order
to resolve the query. The Chatbot has information stored in its dataset to identify the sentences
and make a decision itself as a response to answer a given question. The program analyses the
user’s query then the bot responds to the query.

Problem Statement
In the earlier days, students had to visit the college to enquire about details like courses, fee
structure, admission process, and other information about the college, which is a tiresome and
long process. This is where we thought of using an intelligent bot to deliver the information. In
this century a platform needs to be created where students can enquire, and gather answers to
their questions through a fast and reliable source.

Aim and Objectives

The main aim of this system is to create a facility whereby students can have access to enough
information concerning their prospective school at any given time. While the subsidiary
objectives are.

 Users do not have to go personally to the university admin office for inquiries.
 To keep the users fully updated about the ongoing and upcoming events on the campus.
 Reduce the workload on the admin office staff.
 This application allows users to have a reliable source for the admission process.
 Save the time and strength of visiting and contacting the administration office often.

Significance of the study

The implementation of this project has the potential to benefit the academic field and
society. Chatbots can make the enrolment process easier as it provides answers to the most
common questions applicants and students ask yearly.
It provides a faster response time and provides round the clock (24/7) support. A chatbot can
handle multiple requests simultaneously without compromising the quality of interactions.
Students are often concerned about making the right career decisions, and many of these courses
are offered at different universities. The university can leverage chatbots to attract students
interested in the courses they offer.

Scope and Limitations

The scope of this study is centered on designing an automated chatbot application for student
online communication and information gathering at a particular university.

The limitation of this work is the need for audio queries and responses as it handles only text-
based queries. The system is strictly based on Crawford University. It also requires an active
internet connection.

Motivation for the study

As students, we require many types of information regarding our college and university during
the course study. Sometimes getting this information is rather cumbersome and lengthy. For
example, getting information regarding tuition fee structure, timetable, academic calendar, and
course allocation is sometimes difficult, which is unnecessary. We live in the computer age
where automation and simple procedures are easy to achieve. So why the long and unnecessary
process to get this trivial information? As a computer science student, the orientation is to solve
such problems using technology to implement a system to achieve ease of usage in real life. This
is where we thought of using an intelligent bot to deliver this information. Think about an
application, where all you have to do is ask. For instance, if you want to know the fee structure;
Details about a particular lecturer; Faculties; or Courses offering; then ask the bot about it, clear
or not it will tell you. It can also solve the dilemma when a person is about to join the university.
He/she may want to enquire about the fee structure and the admission procedure.

Literature Review
Nitesh Thakur, Akshay Hiwrale, Sourabh Selote, Abhijeet Shinde, and Prof. Namrata
Mahakalkar, proposed an artificial chatbot using NLP (Natural Language Processing) which can
be done in two ways the first via written text and the second is via verbal or voice
communication. Written communication is much easier than verbal communication. This paper
introduces an interest in some emerging capabilities for evolving speed understanding and
processing in virtual human dialogue systems.

Harsh Pawar, Pranav Prabhu, Ajay Yadav, Vincent Mendonca, and Joyce Lemos, a chatbot
designed by them using knowledge in a database. The proposed system has Online Enquiry and
Online Chatbot System. The development is done using various programming languages by
creating a user-friendly graphical interface to send and receive a response. The main purpose is it
uses SQL (Structured Query Language) for pattern matching which is been stored in the
program.

Eliza is considered the first Chatbot, which works on the pattern matching system. It is
developed by Joseph Weizenbaum in 1964. ELIZA was one of the first chatterbots and one of
the first programs capable of attempting the Turing test. ELIZA's creator, Weizenbaum, regarded
the program as a method to show the superficiality of communication between man and machine
but was surprised by the number of individuals who attributed human-like feelings to the
computer program, including Weizenbaum’s secretary.

A.L.I.C.E. (Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity), also referred to as Alicebot, or

simply Alice, is a natural language processing chatterbot a program that engages in a
conversation with a human by applying some heuristic pattern matching rules to the human's
input. It was inspired by Weizenbaum’s classical ELIZA program. The program is unable to pass
the Turing test, as even the casual user will often expose its mechanistic aspects in short
conversations. ALICE was implemented by Richard Wallace in 1995.

Clever Bot is a chatterbot web application that uses an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm to
have conversations with humans. It was created by British AI scientist Rollo Carpenter. Unlike
some other chatterbots. Cleverbot's responses are not pre-programmed. Instead, it learns from
human input: Humans type into the box below the Cleverbot logo and the system finds all
keywords or an exact phrase matching the input. After searching through its saved conversations,
it responds to the input by finding how a human responded to that input when it was asked, in
part or in full, by Cleverbot.
Kuki, formerly known as Mitsuku, is a chatbot created from Pandora bots AIML technology by
Steve Worswick. It is a five-time winner of a Turing Test competition. Kuki claims to be an 18-
year-old female chatbot from the Metaverse. It contains all of Alice AIML files, with many
additions from user-generated conversations, and is always a work in progress.

PARRY was written in 1972 by psychiatrist Kenneth Colby, then at Stanford University. Parry is
a natural language program that simulates the thinking of a paranoid individual. This program
was the first to pass the “Turing Test”.

Methodology
This is a Web Application Project entitled University Enquiry Chatbot. This project will be
developed using PHP Programming Language. This chatbot application can simulate
conversations with the end-users. The end-user can ask/query anything with this application and
the chatbot will automatically respond accordingly to the queries/questions. The program has an
admin panel where an admin user of this web application will feed the responses for the possible
questions that users may ask/query to the chatbot. The admin panel has many features that are
related to the chatbot information. The admin user can also manage some other details of the chat
bot such as the welcome message, no result message for the query, and system information on
this application. Talking about the chatbot responses, the admin will store information in the
system and will tag the possible question for that response. The system also stores the questions
that no answers can be found in the database. By this, the admin can check if the questions are
relevant to the site. And if does, the admin user can create a response for that query.

The Project requirements are as follows:

Front-End

 HTML5
 CSS
 Javascript
 jQuery
 Ajax
 Bootstrap
 AdminLTE Template
Back-End

 PHP
 MySQL Database
 MySQLi OOP

Proposed System
A University Enquiry chatbot project is developed with the help of a PHP framework that
analyzes users’ queries and perceives users’ messages. The proposed System could be an internet
application that provides answers to the queries provided by the user. Users will merely question
through the chatbot that's used for chatting. The answers apply to what the user queries. If the
answers are found to be invalid or not accessible then, those queries are held on into the
unrequited table that is essentially created by the admin. Later those queries can be updated by
the admin, just in case of urgency we are going to provide a message that “our representatives
will get in touch with you shortly”. This may be displayed once aggregation, the specified info
from the user.

Admin will read invalid answers through the portal via login System, it'll permit the admin to get
rid of the invalid answer also as in updating the acceptable answer for the question raised by the
user. The User will raise any faculty-connected activities through the system. The System
analyzes the question and so answers the user. The system answers the question as if it's
answered by the person.

Conclusion
The main objectives of the project were to develop an algorithm that will be used to identify
answers associated with user-submitted questions. To develop a database where all the related
data are going to be stored and to develop an internet interface. Background research happened,
including a summary of the conversation procedure and any relevant chatbots available. A
database system was designed that stores information regarding questions, answers, keywords,
logs, and feedback messages.

The main motive of the project is to reduce the workload on the college's office staff and reduce
the response time to a user's query.
Reference
Harsh Pawar, Pranav Prabhu, Ajay Yadav, Vincent Mendonca, Joyce Lemos, “College Enquiry
Chatbot Using Knowledge in Database”, International Journal for Research in Applied Science
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Nitesh Thakur, Akshay Hiwrale, Sourabh Selote, Abhijeet Shinde and Prof. Namrata
Mahakalkar, “Artificially Intelligent Chatbot”, Universal Research Reports, ISSN: 2348 – 5612,
Volume: 04, Issue: 06, July - September 2017, pp 43 - 47.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleverbot

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuki_(chatbot)

https://www.chatbots.org/chatbot/parry/