University of Adelaide chatbot checks international student eligibility

The University of Adelaide has created a world-first chatbot that helps prospective international students from over 228 countries quickly determine their eligibility to study at the university.

The International Eligibility Assessment digital assistant is based on a full Oracle stack, comprising Oracle Digital Assistant and a number of cloud services.

It was jointly developed by the university and IT service provider Rubicon Red, and was soft-launched in June last year. 

It presently validates around 100 new leads a day, of which about half prove eligible to study at the university.

University staff gathered the specific data required to populate the bot’s conversation flows.

The bot captures the unique qualifications of prospective students and maps them to eligibility criteria from over 228 countries.

The result, according to Rubicon Red, “is a streamlined, step-by-step personalised conversational flow, tailored to individual users to provide their eligibility, based on their citizenship, qualification country and their current qualifications.”

“The chatbot enables prospective international students to determine if they are eligible to study at The University of Adelaide through a series of simple questions, tailored to their specific country with relevant qualification and English language requirements,” it said.

“The bot indicates whether an applicant can apply now for direct entry, may require a pathway, or is not eligible.

“With the International Eligibility Assessment bot now available, prospective international students from all over the globe are able to easily determine whether they are eligible to study at The University of Adelaide, allowing the University to tap into a much broader potential market of international students.”

The chatbot can be accessed via the University’s International Student webpage or via the university’s Facebook Messenger page. 

Rubicon Red said the solution offered “significant” benefits to the university, including lower cost-to-serve and an increased volume of pre-qualified leads.

The bot is also useful for prospect management agents that respond to inbound calls and emails, since it allows them to “provide a defined response by giving prospective students an insight into their eligibility, and offer further information on scholarships or other pathways based on the eligibility determination.” 

“This information was not available internally before, so staff could not provide this level of service for prospective students,” it added.

This project is a finalist in the Education category of the iTnews Benchmark Awards 2020.