"Aistifsar" Enquiry Chatbot using Artificial Intelligence Markup Language (AIML)

Abstract

There is always an increase in the number of students enrolling to universities and higher education institutions. During this process the prospective student tend to enquire various particular from university or higher educational institute via telephone, website, emails, friends, postal service and sometimes with agents. The information obtained by prospective student by these means sometimes incomplete and inadequate. Also these means sometimes takes longer time in answering to the queries of prospective student. Moreover institutes are spending huge amount of cost for this purpose as it involve hiring employees, technology and providing the necessary infrastructure. Many commercial establishments with similar problem are trying to address such situation by introducing a “Chatbot” in their web portals or in information systems. A Chatbot is a conversational agent where a computer program is intended to simulate an intelligent discussion or conversation. It can take user contribution to numerous formats like content, voice, and pictures. For this reason, ongoing advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) have enormously improved the exactness and adequacy of common language preparing and making Chatbot’s a practical alternative for query based works. This paper will study the benefits to create a Chatbot for the university and higher educational Institutes and how this technology can be helpful for prospective students to replying to their queries. Also a Chatbot will be developed along with our own dataset for Middle East College, Oman using the principles of Artificial Intelligence Markup Language to know the relevance of such facilities to address the needs of prospective student.