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As of fall 2023, students at the College of Charleston can engage with a text-powered AI chat bot to provide feedback to the institution and receive support.
Eli Wilson/iStock Editorial/Getty Images Plus
Getting academic resources and supports into College of Charleston students’ hands is one step easier with Clyde the chat bot.
This past fall, the college partnered with EdSights to provide artificial intelligence–powered texts to college students throughout the academic year, helping gauge student persistence and connect learners with resources as needed.
During the first year, the initiative received over 50,000 text messages and flagged more than 900 students for follow-up, helping aid the college’s retention efforts and providing personalized support to learners. The data collected through the chat bot also helped guide institutional priorities.
Students and AI
A July survey from Quizlet found that among the 82 percent of students saying they’ve used AI technologies, many use it to do research (46 percent) or summarize information (38 percent).
While generative artificial intelligence use has grown across higher education in the past two years, not everyone is on board with the technology. A recently published survey from Wiley found 36 percent of students do not use AI tools because they don’t trust them.
At the College of Charleston, leaders are hoping to keep pace with students’ use and training faculty, staff and other campus members how to think about it intentionally through guidelines and professional development opportunities, says Chris Korey, associate provost for student success.
The background: As on many college campuses, College of Charleston officials recognized a need to get students to respond to communication, whether it be email, phone calls or texts. Previously, the college had a platform that allowed staff to text students, but they functioned more like email blasts, providing one-way contact or requiring students to take additional steps to get information.
Clyde, in comparison, allows students to get immediate support in a one-off text environment but also create customizable outreach depending on the various campus needs during the year.
The college already had a system in place called FAST, short for “faculty assisting students in trouble,” which was an anonymous online portal that allowed students, faculty and staff to share alerts of students who they were concerned about. When the college elected to add EdSights’ tech to campus, it built off of the FAST system for outreach and support, explains Chris Korey, associate provost for student success.
Students were invited to join the program at the start of the academic year through emails and social media posts.
College of Charleston
How it works: Clyde is named after the college’s cougar mascot. Any student with a phone number on file in their student portal receives an initial outreach text from Clyde at the start of the term asking if they want to opt in to the service.
The college created a cross-departmental team, including personnel from student affairs and academic affairs and a case manager to liaise between the teams, who monitor Clyde and its engagements.
Students who choose to engage with Clyde receive a check-in message from the bot about once a week, focusing on their academics, financial wellness, campus engagement and health. If they need help, students can also text Clyde first to ask questions or get connected to institutional offices.
Once a student shares that they need help, the chat bot generates a report that is shared with staff and faculty members who have relationships with those learners.
For example, if a student veteran indicates they’re struggling with basic needs security, their information is shared with someone in the veteran support office, who then connects them to the appropriate resources. This helps boost students’ feelings of belonging and ensure the outreach is intentional and personal.
“Those initial outreach attempts [from advisers or career professional staff] weren’t as successful because that initial relationship wasn’t there,” Korey says.
When students need immediate help, such as discussing self-harm or a mental health crisis, Clyde alerts a group of staff members who are designated as the response team for that issue via email. They can then reach the student or a crisis responder.
The impact: Ninety-four percent of Charleston students opted in to the initiative, and 62 percent of those learners engaged with the chat bot. Throughout the first year, students sent over 57,000 text message responses to the bot.
In addition to reaching students who needed help, the intervention also allowed campus leaders to collect better data on the student experience. For example, Clyde asked students who lived off campus or transfers about their housing and transportation issues, offering opportunities for students to share feedback directly with campus leaders and create aggregated data on the topic.
Administrators also gained greater insight into commuter students’ mental and physical health, social connections and where they study on campus.
“We were able to connect them to our commuter lounge space and also created a new webpage to highlight all of the available study spaces to students on the campus that included information on whether there were plugs, whiteboards, noise level, et cetera,” Korey says.
After the pilot year, campus leaders made adjustments to the program, including creating a designated staff member to report out information as it comes into the bot.
“We needed to have a single person who was very attentive to what was coming in and serving as a sort of curator of the information and then passing it out,” Korey says.
Of students who engaged, 77 percent said they enjoyed texting Clyde. Of the 23 percent who weren’t satisfied, many were dissatisfied with the bot’s repetitive information, which Korey says the university is addressing with EdSights’ new generative AI–powered conversations.
Based on its interactions with learners, Clyde flagged 979 students as at risk for follow-up, which college leaders estimated saved around 229 hours of staff time in identifying students who need additional support.
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