{"id":13216,"date":"2018-08-28T08:30:03","date_gmt":"2018-08-28T16:30:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2018\/08\/28\/news-6983\/"},"modified":"2018-08-28T08:30:03","modified_gmt":"2018-08-28T16:30:03","slug":"news-6983","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2018\/08\/28\/news-6983\/","title":{"rendered":"University-customized Alexa devices will answer students\u2019 questions"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Credit to Author: Matthew Finnegan| Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2018 08:17:00 -0700<\/strong><\/p>\n

Saint Louis University (SLU) has rolled out 2,300 Alexa-powered Echo Dot virtual assistants to all of its student living spaces to provide answers to university-related queries about events, speakers on campus and more.<\/p>\n

The university also plans to extend use of the artificial intelligence assistant into classrooms and meeting rooms in future and aims to use the technology to support workplace productivity for its faculty staff, according to CIO, David Hakanson.<\/p>\n

Students arriving at SLU this month can access a custom skill that answers questions relating to university services, such as \u201cWhen does the library open?\u201d or \u201cWhere is the registrar\u2019s office?\u201d<\/p>\n

Already, 130 university-related queries can be answered using the Alexa, and the university is working on more. The idea is that Alexa can reduce the time it takes for students to access information online from seconds to minutes. \u201cThe value proposition for us was around productivity,\u201d said Hakanson.<\/p>\n

While it is not alone in providing Echo devices to students \u2014 Arizona State University and Northeastern University are among those with similar initiatives, albeit on a smaller scale \u2014 SLU\u2019s use of Alexa-powered devices can be a differentiator in helping attract more students, said Rob Arnold, industry principal for connected work at Frost & Sullivan.\u201cIt is an interesting deployment,\u201d he said. \u201cThere is a lot of competition among higher-education institutions to attract students, and this appears to be a fine point of differentiation for SLU.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hakanson said that the rollout of Echo Dot devices to students is \u201cjust day one\u201d in SLU\u2019s plans for voice interfaces within the university.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are investing in this because we see voice technology as being a major component of improving productivity,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe see a time in the next few years where people are spending less time searching for information through websites, or searching for reports, and instead using a virtual assistant to get immediate access to data.\u201d<\/p>\n

SLU began investigating the use of the technology earlier this year, and the rollout took three months from conception to completion, with the actual deployment of devices requiring just three days.<\/p>\n

A pilot project this spring saw 20 Echo devices and 20 devices from an unnamed rival provider given to students as a trial of the technology. \u201cWe surveyed them multiple times throughout that pilot, and the preference was the Amazon platform,\u201d said Hakanson.<\/p>\n

Amazon\u2019s tools stood out for two reasons. For students, Alexa was the easiest virtual assistant to interact with. But equally important was the ability to manage devices using Alexa for Business<\/a>, Hakanson said.<\/p>\n

The Alexa for Business platform, announced by Amazon in November 2017, provides a management console to help administrators deploy large numbers of Echo devices in corporate settings.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe ability to centrally manage devices through one system and the flexibility that comes from Alexa for Business was a significant differentiator,\u201d said Hakanson.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we had 10 to 20 devices, then individually managing those [would be difficult], but at 2,300, there was no way we were going to effectively manage them without having some robust centralized management system.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Alexa for Business platform is what really allowed us to do this at any level of scale.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The use of virtual assistants raises privacy concerns<\/a> in the workplace, said Arnold, and this is also true in the university setting. \u201cAdmins and users need to be smart and aware of information they share in the presence of voice assistants<\/a> in any environment,\u201d said Arnold.<\/p>\n

It is a factor that SLU took into account as part of the deployment project. \u201cWe were very cautious, and so we have the devices on a dedicated, secured network that is specific to this purpose,\u201d said Hakanson.<\/p>\n

Students are told they can simply press the mute button of the Echo Dot devices or stow them away until they leave the space where the device is located. The privacy guidelines offered by Amazon Web Services are also provided for students to view.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, the devices are not currently linked to any individual accounts, meaning that students\u2019 personal information is not accessed by the Echo devices. The downside to current security and privacy measures is that certain Alexa skills \u2014 for instance popular music-streaming services such as Spotify \u2014 are unavailable to students.<\/p>\n

Over time, there will likely be more personalization of devices, however, allowing access to personal course information, grades, timetables and so forth. \u201cWe are not at that point yet, and we feel that there is some more due diligence needed to make sure that the appropriate level of security and privacy is in place before we offer those features,\u201d Hakanson said.<\/p>\n

Security was not the only challenge for IT, Hakanson pointed out. \u201cGetting these devices on an enterprise corporate network is not always trivial, so you definitely have to look a the architecture of your network and make sure you are designing it in a way that these device can connect easily.\u201d<\/p>\n

SLU plans to deploy Alexa and Echo devices more widely in future too. The technology could be used in a variety of ways to support faculty staff.<\/p>\n

A proof of concept has been set up to use the Alexa voice interface to start classroom or meeting-room systems. This means connecting Alexa for Business with SLU\u2019s Crestron control and automaton tools to switch on projectors, TVs or conferencing systems.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo you can go into the room and say, \u2018Alexa start my class,\u2019 or, \u2018Alexa start my meeting,\u2019 and then various technologies will come to life and have everything ready for you,\u201d said Hakanson.<\/p>\n

The virtual assistants could also be personalized for faculty staff for office productivity purposes, allowing staff to ask questions that might otherwise require reports to be created.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe see a lot of potential from a broader productivity standpoint in the workplace through this type of technology, and so we are pursuing that,\u201d he said, with the caveat that more work needs to be done on security before moving ahead.<\/p>\n

Frost & Sullivan\u2019s Arnold said that Alexa and other voice-activated assistants will become more commonplace in business environments. \u201cIn general, we do expect to see voice-driven AI become more prevalent in business environments, particularly for use cases such as virtual receptionists, concierge and orchestrating technology in meeting rooms.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.computerworld.com\/category\/security\/index.rss<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Credit to Author: Matthew Finnegan| Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2018 08:17:00 -0700<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n
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Saint Louis University (SLU) has rolled out 2,300 Alexa-powered Echo Dot virtual assistants to all of its student living spaces to provide answers to university-related queries about events, speakers on campus and more.<\/p>\n

The university also plans to extend use of the artificial intelligence assistant into classrooms and meeting rooms in future and aims to use the technology to support workplace productivity for its faculty staff, according to CIO, David Hakanson.<\/p>\n

Students arriving at SLU this month can access a custom skill that answers questions relating to university services, such as \u201cWhen does the library open?\u201d or \u201cWhere is the registrar\u2019s office?\u201d<\/p>\n

To read this article in full, please click here<\/a><\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[11062,10643],"tags":[11113,19335,253,5897,714],"class_list":["post-13216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computerworld","category-independent","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-digital-assistants","tag-education","tag-privacy","tag-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13216\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}