Clyde the Chatbot: Transforming Student Support with AI

At the College of Charleston, Clyde the ai powered chatbot is transforming how students engage with campus life—from academic questions to emotional wellness. In this episode, we explore how Clyde is reshaping student support—one message at a time. Alicia Caudill, executive vice president for student affairs, and Chris Korey, associate provost for student success dive into the origins, development and evolving capabilities of Clyde. They also highlight how Clyde's strategic outreach is improving student engagement and retention, drawing on both general and customized outreach. The episode covers the detailed workings of Clyde, its integration into the student success platform and how it's helping address specific student challenges in real-time.

 "One of the great things about Clyde is that we get the information about students in real time which means we don't find out in December that somebody's been homesick since August," says Caudill. 

In partnership with the education technology company EdSights, Clyde serves as a resource for questions and connects students to support services focused on four key areas:

• Academics
• Financial Matters
• Campus Engagement
• Mental and Physical Health

Featured on this episode:

Alicia Caudill executive vice president for student affairs

Chris Korey associate provost for student success

Resources from this episode:

• Vincent Tinto: A nationally recognized expert in student retention, referred to as the “grandfather of retention,” and a partner in the development of EdSights' platform.
• EdSights: The company that developed Clyde and its underlying platform, including the retention calendar and outreach tools.
• For more information about Clyde the chatbot, email clyde@cofc.edu.

Transcript

SoCofC-Clyde the Chatbot-draft 2

amy: [00:00:00] Welcome to speaking of College of Charleston. On this episode, we're exploring how Clyde an AI powered chatbot is changing the game in student support. Clyde the chatbot connects with students through text messaging, answering questions, and offering support before problems become roadblocks. It's a powerful example of how technology is transforming the student experience, and it's working.

amy: 75% of students who interact with Clyde Report a positive experience. Joining me in the studio today are Alicia Kail, executive Vice President for Student Affairs, and Chris Corey, associate Provost for Student Success. They're here to talk about how Clyde was developed, how it's evolving, and why it's becoming a model.

amy: AI driven engagement in higher education. Thank you [00:01:00] both for joining me this morning on speaking of College of Charleston. Um, and we are here to talk about Clyde, the chatbot. Um, so if, I'm hoping you can tell me a little bit about the inspiration. Where did the idea of Clyde the chatbot come from and how did it evolve into a fully functional tool for College of Charleston students?

alicia: Thank you and thanks for the invitation to be here. Uh, I think Dr. Corey and I both love talking about Clyde in all of his forms, but this really started a few years ago when we were working on our student Success Insights implementation of our student success platform to connect faculty and staff around how to support students and a piece in that conversation that seemed to be.

alicia: An opportunity for us was how to get more voice from the students and, and get it in little doses and periodically. And Clyde the chatbot is, is a platform that is, comes from a party that creates the, this platform to engage with students in this way. And so when [00:02:00] they reached out to me. I shared it with Chris and we thought this could be a really interesting way to fill some of the voice that we might wanna add to the conversation around student success.

alicia: And it's in a space that students tend to like to be in, uh, and, and it's accessible to them. So it really came as an outreach from the company that looked like it would fill a need that we had been talking about having. And we brought the company in and I think we did a really good job of bringing together.

alicia: There was a meeting with people from all over campus to get broad insight and input and thoughts on this and to answer questions. And so that's really how it started was a way to add to our student success outreach with more direct student voice using a platform and a space where students tend to engage a little more freely.

amy: Right. And tell us, um, for listeners who don't know what the kind of services, what, what's a overview of the different services that. Um, Clyde offers. 

chris: Sure. Um, so Ed Sites is, uh, our company partner who develops it, and Clyde has a knowledge base. So a bunch of questions that it will answer, [00:03:00] um, that we have provided the answers to.

chris: Um, and it uses, uh, generative AI platform like chat, GPT to help. Create a more lifelike communication between students and, and, and the chat bot. Um, and so the, the platform will take any question from a student. It comes through the chat function on the phone. So it's not an app a student communicates through, you know, iMessage on their Apple phone.

chris: Um, and then Clyde will respond back as best they can, um, based on, on information we have given and some limited access it has to the wider web. Um, it has. Guard rails on it so it won't answer a student's math questions that will point them to faculty or, or tutoring services when it specific questions arise about that.

chris: Um, and so it, it, that piece of the technology is really meant to support students, um, 24 7 in terms of the kinds of information they would like, um, uh, at any [00:04:00] given time. And then there's a second piece, which is, basically a retention calendar. The company builds out in collaboration with us in which Clyde reaches out to students and subsets of students.

chris: Every 10 days. Um, and then it will ask very specific questions to students about how are things going, uh, are you feeling homesick, um, for first year students in the first few weeks of of class. And students then can reply back to that and depending on how they reply, and a further conversation will happen with the student.

chris: And then we collect that information on the backend and can reach out. Specifically to students based on on some of the information they share. So there is a human behind Clyde. Okay. Her name is Alexis Carr in Academic Success and Retention. Um, and. She helps coordinate outreach based on information that students may share, share with Clyde.

amy: So how mu was, how much work was that coming up with those like, questions that go out every 10 days? they have 

chris: partnered with, [00:05:00] um, of variety of educators to sort of build out what that. Um, calendar looks like. Yeah. So it's a standard calendar for their partners, and then we create custom outreach depending on things that we may be interested in on campus.

chris: So Alicia's team was interested in out outreach to students who don't live on campus and what's their experience like. So we know who those students are and we reach out to them specifically to get some of that information. So we have a whole series of custom outreach that we do to specific populations.

alicia: And I, I think one of the great things about this tool is, is the calendar that ED sites creates is based on data and information and national things happening at other campuses. So we're staying kind of on trend current with what's happening across the country. Then we have the ability to specialize it based on student populations or questions that we might have that we want answers to.

alicia: And I think the great thing about it is we get the information in real time so we don't find out in [00:06:00] December that somebody's been homesick since August. Right. You know, and that that's affected them. So we can work to get to students as much as we can in the point where they might be feeling that experience that we know could affect them further out in the semester.

amy: Right. And I would think that, um, students might be more apt to. Answer a question where, where it feels private, I would think with a chatbot instead of if they are feeling homesick, then instead of going to an office and talking to somebody, which is a little bit more vulnerable maybe. Have you found like that the, that students are engaging with it in like more than they would've if it were in person?

amy: Is there a way to even track that? I wonder? Yeah, so 

alicia: I, I think, I think one that's an area we can continue to work on, which is why I think we're one of the reasons we're glad to be having this conversation with you is Clyde will send back campus resources that relate to that. So I think we do know that students are getting access to resources that they maybe didn't remember or didn't know were here to work with, whatever [00:07:00] the challenges they're facing.

alicia: I think the second piece then is translating that to, if you need something more, if you want human outreach, so for example, our financial wellness initiative, when students are indicating they might be having some financial questions or challenges. She will reach out to them, Liz Cooper, who works with financial wellness, but, but then our second piece is, I think we're still working on and would love to hear from students about how to get them to engage when we do that follow up outreach that could help them with that next step.

alicia: So I think it's a yes, and we are definitely getting students more resources in the time and space they need it. Um, but I think we're still working on, and I, we're not the only partner school then. How does that translate to if you need more, how we engage you and Alexis has some great strategies for that.

alicia: So I think each year, Clyde is here and the more familiar students become with this resource, then we continue to see more and more students engage in the follow up or at least be more familiar. I, I also think the questions, like the question about homesickness. One [00:08:00] of the things it does is it normalizes what you might be feeling as a student.

alicia: You know, so like students feel homesick, you know, students might worry about money, students might worry about midterms. So it normalizes that that's okay and that there's resources to help with that, and that if we're asking the question, then you're not the only person that might be experiencing that at that point in time.

amy: Which is a huge part, I think, for students just knowing that they're not alone. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. I think is huge. Yeah. 

chris: And some of the feedback we got when we asked at the end of the year about their interaction with Clyde is some of them, like 75% of students who, who responded. Responded very positively about having Clyde talk to them during the semester and, and that they would talk about the fact that it was nice that they felt like there was something out there right, that they could, that was reaching out to them.

chris: And, and there was an opportunity for them to communicate with, with the chatbot, um, as just another layer of support. 

amy: And, and it is available 24 7. Um, so do, are you tracking at all? Like, do you [00:09:00] see that it's used in these off hours, like at 11 o'clock at night or 

chris: so? We cannot see. Well, you can see in the raw data, like when the communication is happening.

chris: Um, and then you can also track. Um, through, through each day there's a dashboard that allows you to see when the biggest of popular moments are in terms of, of popular things. And we've done fun things with students to keep them engaged with Clyde, but there's a set of like emoji. Outreach things about, you know, what, what is this movie based on?

chris: These emojis. Oh, that's, yeah. Those tend to like return people back to Clyde. Yeah. Be like, oh, this is super cool. And then, you know, there's other things that we can do with Clyde, but some of that fun stuff keeps, keeps students engaged. Yeah. Which, 

alicia: by the way, I still don't know what movie it was. Um, and I, so Clyde engages over the summer, which has been helpful this summer.

alicia: 'cause we've identified some students that might, that aren't maybe in Charleston, but need some outreach or resource for the fall. And another piece that's a smaller, but I think [00:10:00] important piece that Clyde will do is it, it scans for certain words, so, or certain phrases. So if a student indicates something that they might, um, that they might need some immediate outreach, we get an alert.

alicia: Um, from a mental health standpoint, so our counseling center, Dean of Student Student Affairs, we get an immediate alert that says a student responded in some way that might, where they might need immediate outreach. And when those come in, we immediately use our Dean of students on call to reach out to the student.

alicia: Um, typically they're surprised that somebody's behind Clyde, so we remind them there's a human behind there. Yeah, and, and they're, I think maybe sometimes just in, you know, engaging with the chatbot in a way like humans engage with chatbots, but sometimes, in fact, the students do, they need some outreach in that moment or time, and it is likely, in many of the cases we wouldn't have known they needed somebody in that moment in time, 

amy: so, exactly.

amy: Yeah. Apologies to listeners that there's construction going on outside and it doesn't sound like [00:11:00] it's letting up. So we're just gonna keep talking and work through it and, and hopefully College of Charleston in the summer. Right? The sound of the summer. A lot of work happening on campus. Use 

chris: AI to remove the Yeah, maybe so.

amy: Yeah. Um, so what are, can you, can you talk about some of the most common questions Clyde receives? 

chris: So we can see, we off. We can't see the stream of questions that come in. Um, but they do provide a, um, sort of frequency chart of these are the topics that your students are texting in about. It. It tends to be about academic support, like when's the advising place open?

chris: Um, it will be about food and things at liberty, like what's available in the dining halls. Um, you know, I think there's common things around parking and other, other sorts of things. Bad weather. Yeah. Or Yes. Like when there's gonna be bad weather. Do we have to Yeah. Think Clyde set up? Do we have to go together?

chris: Yeah. Initially I'll say like, Clyde, um, wasn't designed to be in a hurricane [00:12:00] zone. So in the first semester, um, it was, he wasn't, um, responding correctly to students who were a question, had questions about, are we gonna have to evacuate? What about bad weather? Clyde, um, didn't know. Yeah. About, hadn't been trained on information about, about emergency response, but now that's interesting.

chris: Um, we now they have, the product is developed where. We can query Clyde on our own to see how Clyde is answering. Yeah. Um, and so we set a few, um, students on Clyde to sort of poke at him about, um, emergency preparedness. And so we've, we've improved, um, Clyde's responses to, yeah. To that particular unique part of, uh, living in Charleston.

amy: Yeah. I mean because, so we dunno where Clyde lives, but it is somewhere with really good weather. Where would that be? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Um. ' cause it would be great if a student could say, you know, do I need to worry about flooding? Can I drive on campus? Yeah. Or, yeah. Yes. Um, and 

chris: so, and, and part of the way it's designed [00:13:00] is, is Clyde will provide some answers, but always point students to an, to where they can find online resource that has the most up to date.

chris: So we don't have to keep an up to date thing on the back end. 

amy: Yeah. Yeah. Um. And, and so the, the process of students, I mean, with with, we have new students coming in in the next couple weeks. Are they, as soon as a new student comes on campus, are they automatically enrolled in Clyde? How does that work?

chris: Yeah. Any active student, um, will be, um, updated into the, into the system. Um, and when they're here at orientation there, the orientation interns introduce them to Clyde. Have conversations about the things you should ask Clyde and what you shouldn't ask Clyde to try to do a little education about appropriate use of a chatbot.

chris: Um, and also just give them a sense of, of why it's important. Um, and then they will receive a welcome text from Clyde, think in the second week of classes, and then they'll start receiving information based on their year. 

amy: [00:14:00] And if, and if they didn't wanna receive, they could opt out. Mm-hmm. But it sounds like not many students have opted out since only like 

chris: three or 4% opt out.

chris: Yeah. That's great. And they can always come back. Yeah. Yeah. They can opt back in if they've opted out 

alicia: and, and they may not engage, like, they might not answer all the questions, but the fact that they're still receiving the messages or those kinds of things, I think lets us know that they're getting communication from us even if they don't answer the question.

amy: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, um, I mean, and I think this is happening across the country at other, I, I know it's happening at other universities across the country and, and filling a great need for, for students being able to have access to the support in the moment that they need it. So. It'll be interesting to see how this evolves over time, across, you know, with here and with other universities.

chris: Yeah, go 

amy: ahead. 

alicia: And Dr. Corey's being very modest, but he was, he did some really great work with his team last year when, when we needed students, um, that hadn't enrolled for the, for the fall semester, spring to fall, and actually was [00:15:00] published as, as a highlight of the ed sites work. So I maybe you wanna mention Yeah.

alicia: Kind of how we use that tool as a res, as a research way to. To re-enroll students that we were looking for. Yeah, so 

chris: Clyde will, we, we have a campaign that goes out to reach out to students who haven't registered for classes. We're doing it right now actually. Um, and so, so 

amy: enrolled but haven't, haven't registered yet.

amy: Active a student have registered for classes. Yeah. 

chris: Um, and they're, the question will go out asking them about what, uh, their likelihood of coming back and what may be keeping them from doing that. Um, and so at the end of the fall, spring semester, I guess a year ago. We did all of that outreach and were able to capture a, I know, close to a hundred students that had initially had not been registered for classes and were back in the, in the fall.

chris: Wow. Um, and so it does give us a way to connect, um, maybe that's a little more efficient than email. Um, yeah. And, you know, in, in terms of the student affairs work [00:16:00] around, um. Food insecurity in the fall, there's an outreach that goes out to students to find out if they are food or housing insecure, and it points them to, to areas inas, um, um, um, division.

chris: Thank you. Um, and in the, in the spring, I think there was some, in the fall, it was some several hundred students responded back that they, they felt like they needed assistance. Wow. Um, and then. Her team reaches out and does, does work with them. And then that same, so in the fall, all students get that note.

chris: And in the spring only the subset that responded positively in the fall gets a follow up. And then it was reduced down to only 37 maybe. Yeah, very few. Wow. Mm-hmm. So it's another way to, that shows different offices in how they can interact with students. That's fantastic. Yeah. And a couple hundred 

amy: then down to, yeah.

amy: That's fantastic. And that was just by. Clyde pointing out to them where they could go to 

alicia: and we did some follow up with them. Yeah. Additional resources or some of them may have already been on our radar, so it let us know [00:17:00] that they, uh, need, were maybe having some extra struggle that we weren't aware of.

amy: Right. 

alicia: And, and so I think one of the, one of the strategies that Clyde allows us to do. It allows us to get to subsets of students so we can target communication. So we're not, you know, I think obviously mass communication to all students in multiple facets is really important because you never know who you're gonna catch in that net.

alicia: But it does allow us to get to more subset groups so we can focus our resources on students that have indicated to us that they might need us a little more around whatever that topic is. 

amy: Right. And I, it just helps. So I'm just thinking about the students, like it helps so much weeding through all of the information.

amy: Mm-hmm. I mean, we provide a lot of information on our website. Mm-hmm. There's a lot to, mm-hmm. So to be able to weed through that and get exactly what you're looking for, I think is a huge time saver for, for students. 

alicia: One of the main partners with ed sites, um, who is the firm that, [00:18:00] that has created this platform is Vincent Tinto and May, many people may not know his name, but if you're any doing any work in student success or retention, he's kind of the grandfather of retention.

alicia: And you know, even back many years ago, he would talk about the importance of student voice. And so he's become a partner with them. And I think both Chris and I have gotten to meet him in different conversations and. And a lot of times when we work on, you know, retention efforts, we, we, it can be hard to figure out different ways to get the student voice.

alicia: And this is certainly not the only way, but it's an important way, especially for today's students and how they like to engage to get snippets of their voice. And that really is like the whole purpose of the platform, right. 

amy: Right. Tore, like you were saying at the beginning, to reach students where they are.

amy: Mm-hmm. Um, 

chris: and it's more than just, uh, the chatbot. Mm-hmm. I think. Mm-hmm. It could be that we could build a chat bot on our own mm-hmm. That would just answer questions, but it's really that underlying framework that, [00:19:00] that allows us to reach out, uh, and then have them engage with the chatbot in very specific ways about specific questions that sort of enhances how, how cloud works.

chris: Yeah. 

alicia: And when we lay the data, so like ed sites. Categorizes based on four student categories that really can affect retention. When we can compare that data to what we see in student success insights and to what we're seeing actually happening in the classroom or in the residence halls. And we get a much more robust picture of what's happening with students and how to think about, and, you know, strategies, interventions, new programs, new ways to engage them, things that we might wanna stop doing 'cause they're not having the effect that we want them to do.

alicia: And I think that's probably a next phase for us as a college is to kind of look at what is all, where, where do we all have all this information and, and do we, how do we look at it comprehensively to decide. Where we're having most benefit to students. Mm-hmm. And then if there's areas we're [00:20:00] not, can we redirect some of that human or other resource to areas where we might have more benefit?

amy: Yeah. That was kind of good segue. Yeah. Sorry. That was gonna be the next question, was what are the future enhancements? I 'cause Clyde, we, we've had Clyde for a year over a year. So this is our third year. Oh God. Thank you. Yeah. Yes. 

chris: Clyde's third year. 

amy: Yeah. So are there things that are, are, are gonna be different this year?

amy: Moving ahead. Are you. Does it feel like it's at a pretty good place right now where it is? 

chris: I think at this point they have done some technical enhancements to its capability to have natural conversations, which has been good. Mm-hmm. Um, and then on our end, um, I think we are just evolving how we outreach the students or what populations we're we're doing.

chris: And then we have. A new data analyst in our area, and certainly we will start to use the raw data that comes out to compare it as Isha said, to other pieces of data we have about students to get a bigger picture. 

amy: And assuming, uh, this just occurred to me, Clyde can speak different languages, I would [00:21:00] think, with international students.

amy: Do we have That's 

chris: a good question. That's a good question. I don't know the answer to that. Yeah. Um, yeah, I don't know the answer to that. Yeah. 

amy: And how, yeah, that just popped 

chris: into 

amy: my head. Yeah. Well, I think it's, um. It's been a success so far and that's what we all wanna be able to do is, is connect with students and, and figure out the best way to communicate with them and, and get them the information that they need.

amy: And sometimes that feels really, really challenging. And so it seems like this is a great solution and it's working really well to get students the support that they need. 

chris: Yeah, it's been great.

amy: Well, thank you both so much for coming on and talking about Clyde the chatbot, and um, hopefully that gives students more information.

amy: They didn't already have it. And I appreciate your time. Yeah, thanks for having us. 

alicia: Thank you.

amy: Thank you for listening to this episode of Speaking of College of Charleston with today's guests, Alicia Kil and Chris Corey. If you liked this episode, please help us reach more listeners by sharing it with a friend or leaving a review. [00:22:00] For show notes and more episodes, visit the College of Charleston's official news site, the College Today, at today.charleston.edu.

amy: You can find episodes on all major podcast platforms. This episode was produced by Amy Stockwell with recording and sound engineering by Jesse Ks from the Division of Information Technology. Uh, uh. I mean, yeah. How did, how did you guys the, the company has, uh,