Campus Life Through the Eyes of Students: What 100,000 Students are Saying About their College Experience

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Since COVID-19 hit college campuses this past spring, Recchi's company has utilized its technology to talk with college students to get their thoughts on college life during a pandemic.

The company uses AI-powered texting to engage students at scale and collect data about their college journey. It’s not data about students – grades or financial aid information. It’s information directly from students about their college experience.

“It helps all students navigate their college experience, and in a way it’s a tool I wish I had in college,” Recchi said.

Since the pandemic began in April, the company’s chatbots have engaged with more than 100,000 students on a weekly basis in more than one million conversations. They have partnered with schools in more than 32 states.

The company uses an SMS chatbot (AI powered texting), usually represented as the school’s mascot, to launch the initial contact with students. The texting simulates human interaction over an SMS based system.

The system has three key elements. It is customized, proactive, and personalized.

The AI is similar to Siri or Alexa, but is all text-message based. Unlike the others, the chatbot knows the campus resources and about different information on the campus. If a student asks about the deadline to register for classes or what’s on the dining hall menu, Siri won’t know, but the chatbot is able to answer campus-operated information which is programmed in.

It has the ability to check in with students, not wait to be asked questions. With the chatbot, the system checks in with students, asks how they are doing, then collects the data. And it allows coolege administrators to learn about the individual student based on their overall profile and general needs. It can assist students with how to register for classes, or answer questions like whether the gym is open or closed. The bot speaks more than 100 languages and never sleeps, which is critical because of students’ varying schedules.

“Most importantly it gives students the level of service they expect,” Recchi said. “When we think about this generation, as we know they are not very patient. They like to have their responses right away, and they like to get an answer to their questions within seconds. And ultimately, they are just a Google search away from any information that they want often except for their college experience information. So to be able to give them that same level of access to service and information is something that can set you apart from some of the other campuses and college experiences.”

Setup for the chatbot is fairly simple, Recchi said, and can take anywhere from 1-4 weeks. The majority of that time is focused on plugging in campus resources and making sure the brain of the bot has the correct information. The majority of the onboarding consists of populating the FAQs and mapping the resources to the needs of a specific campus. 

Common language used by students is a central part of the chatbot. Not only is the chatbot able to interpret emojis, the bot is capable of understanding slang. For instance, it would be able to understand that a student means “yes” when they answer “for sure”.

With an annual subscription model software license, the cost of the chatbot varies based on how many students you have. The price range is anywhere from $12,000 to $60,000 and depends on how many students you are targeting.

The data gathered from the conversations can be invaluable. Like the information mined from the 100,000 students who have been speaking through the chatbots over the past six months.

“What really was highlighted through these conversations, except for a couple of very niche problems like (students wanting more) testing and disinfecting (due to COVID), the majority of issues students are facing are not new,” Recchi said. “What our data has been showing is that it’s increased. The pandemic has significantly accelerated these challenges, and the need to actually understand what students are dealing with and how to address those issues.”