Dear UAH Faculty and Staff,
As part of our ongoing efforts to increase the number of students who continue their education and ultimately graduate from UAH, we are implementing a chatbot this year. We have partnered with EdSights for this program.
Briefly, the chatbot, named after Charger Blue, will interact with students via text messaging. The program can respond to student questions 24/7 sharing information and suggesting resources that match their inquiry. The bot will also initiate conversations with students every 7-10 days. Student responses will help us identify who may have a greater risk for dropping out of UAH so that the appropriate office can contact them privately. The chatbot will also aggregate data to assist us in identifying trends related to student attrition and retention.
Other campuses are seeing high engagement with the chatbot, with tens of thousands of questions answered each semester, and students rating their satisfaction with the service highly.
We will be sending an e-mail to students announcing the chatbot and inviting them to update their cell phone information. Charger Blue will send the first text to students on August 18 or shortly thereafter, letting students know that it is a bot who will be texting them occasionally and explaining how to opt-out if they don’t want to get the messages. If they stay in, they will get texts every 7-10 days.
If students have questions about the bot, you can refer them to asap@uah.edu.