Institutional Web Management Workshop 2006:
Quality Matters
Chatbot

Brian the Brain: IWMW's very own Chatbot

This year the Institutional Web Management Workshop Web site is testing a chatbot courtesy of DADENLIMITED, one of this year's commercial sponsors.

Note

Please note that the Chatbot was available for the IWMW 2006 event and for a period afterward. This service has now been discontinued.

Background

Chatbots are software applications designed to provide a conversational speech based interface to Web sites and services. They employ various linguistic and artificial intelligence methods to create the illusion of a two-way conversation. Use of chatbots on commercial Web sites has increased over the last few years but the educational sector has yet to make use of this technology on institutional Web sites. A brief history of chatbots is available from Wikipedia. Some of the best known chatbots in current use include Anna on the Ikea Web site, Helen, the Virtual Mortgage Assistant on the Yorkshire Building society Web site, jabberwacky and the ACS chatbots.

Brian

The Institutional Web Management Workshop 2006 chatbot is called Brian (named after Brian Kelly, chair of the first nine of the workshops!). You will need a Macromedia Flash plug-in on your PC to view the chatbot, which has been primed with information on the Institutional Web Management Workshop, UKOLN and the city of Bath.

If you have any further questions about the technology involved in the use of a chatbot the DADENLIMITED FAQ is very useful.

Once Brian is on the screen you can ask him questions. You might want to ask some questions about the workshop like "Where will the workshop be?" and "Who will be presenting at the workshop?" or more important questions like "What are the best pubs in Bath?". A few thoughts/questions to bear in mind when trying out the chatbot might be:

• How successful were the answers to your questions?
• What use could this have on your Web site?
• What about connection issues?
• What potential does this have for visually impaired people?
• What accessibility issues are there generally when using chatbots?
• How does all this work?

Chatbots Parallel session

David Burden and Marieke Guy will be running a parallel session entitled Chatting with Brain: What do Chatbots have to offer the Education Sector? during the workshop.

Long-term Access to This Service

Note that this service is provided by an external service. No guarantees are made concerning long-term access.

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements are given to Emilce Rees who initially suggested the potential of Chatbots for use on institutional Web sites.