Cara, the AI chatbot for student uphold at the university, won the technological innovation of the year award at the THE awards.
University of Galway has been recognised at the prestigious Times Higher Education Awards for its creation of Cara, one of the first student uphold AI chatbots in any Irish university.
The result of a collaboration between the University of Galway and Irish AI start-up Galvia, Cara is an AI-powered student engagement platform that complements the functioning of student uphold services at the university by answering questions based on info already fed to it.
The idea is to free up time for the uphold service to attend to more urgent tasks and impede the team with being inundated by questions that can otherwise be answered by AI technology.
Available 24/7, Cara can answer questions on daily student life, from queries about where to park one’s bike or the location of a specific classroom to reaching out for uphold when feeling lonely or unwell.
“What it has done for us is, it’s just challenged our assumptions around what’s bugging students,” Josephine Walsh, head of student engagement projects at the University of Galway, told SiliconRepublic.com recently.
“Every week, we look at ‘what’s hot’ on Cara, what’s trending, and we look at what’s happening in our physical centre as well as what our student advisors are hearing from students, which then dictates our next steps.”
Founded in 2017, Galvia was previously called Chatspace. The former Start-up of the Week has developed an AI platform to furnish insights that help enterprises boost productivity and deliver better business results.
Cara helped the university to beat University of East London, which won the Highly Commended accolade in the same category for technological and digital innovation.
Now in its 19th year, the annual Times Higher Education Awards are also referred to as the “Oscars of higher education” focuses on the achievements of universities across the UK and Ireland. The latest awards were held at the ACC in Liverpool.
“Collaborating with the university to evolve Cara has been an inspiring journey, showcasing the transformative potential of AI-driven solutions in advancing education and student wellbeing,” said John Clancy, founder and CEO of Galvia.
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