Integrating and Accessing University Information APIs Using Natural Language Processing Tools

Abstract

Attending or working at a university requires students and faculty to manage a large amou-
nt of information to be successful. Both school administration and academic challenges have
requirements to be met. One solution to this problem is to provide a virtual assistant which
gives the required information to students and faculty. In this work, a virtual assistant that
can completely understand conversational English and provide any needed information has
been created. Talking to a virtual assistant to get the information is more convenient than the
conventional way of doing it. Getting information from the virtual assistant does not require
typing or browsing or any type of human interventions, which makes it more time-efficient
and accessible. This solution has been tried in a private environment with a small scope at the
University of St. Thomas and the results have been encouraging. Sixty percent (60%) of the
users believe the assistant is very useful and the remainder finds it moderately useful.