Artificial Intelligence Supported Turkish University Virtual Assistant

Today, it is known that processes such as artificial intelligence, data mining and data processing are gaining more and more value. There are many algorithms and learning models in artificial intelligence processes. It is important that these models are selected according to the data that is desired to get the meaning, and also the data is prepared according to the model to be used in training. It is observed that artificial intelligence makes analytical approaches and facilitates and accelerates different studies in different sectors with automated structures, thus providing a significant savings in terms of cost and labor. These structures are making a name for themselves in different businesses and sectors, from recommendation systems to health services. Intelligent virtual assistants are at the forefront of these automated structures. Intelligent virtual assistants are also known as chatbots. In this study, a smart virtual assistant has been developed that can answer the most frequently asked questions about the university, such as department, fee, academic staff, transportation, and scholarship opportunities. For the data set to be used in the study, 387 different questions were collected from the frequently asked questions on the official websites of 70 different universities in Turkey. In addition to these questions, the dataset includes 4 daily speaking questions and a total of 391 different questions. In addition to the existing questions, variations of the questions were produced to strengthen the training data, and a total of 1236 questions were prepared. The most important difference of this study from similar smart virtual assistant applications is that it is specific to the Turkish language. Thanks to the flexibility of the platform, the developed smart virtual assistant can serve university students in the preferred period both through the mobile application and the website. It is thought that the performance of the smart virtual assistant, which was revealed within the scope of the study, can be increased by enriching the data set in the future and it can provide one-to-one counseling support to the students throughout the education process.