Desenvolvimento de um chatbot como ferramenta de suporte informacional para alunos de nível superior no Instituto Federal do Piauí - Campus Pedro II

Abstract

Chatbots are computer programs that interact with users through natural language, processing words, texts, and commands. They have long been integrated into the educational environment, especially to answer students’ questions, provide information, and offer tutoring. In this context, the aim of this study was to develop a rule-based chatbot to assist higher education students at the Instituto Federal do Piauí, Pedro II Campus, in accessing information about their academic routine. The chatbot was integrated into the Telegram messaging application, taking into account its security, large user base, and tools that facilitate integration with chatbots. The implementation was carried out using the Python programming language with the support of the pyTelegramBotAPI and TheFuzz libraries. Following student evaluation through an online form, it was concluded that the proposed chatbot demonstrated excellent performance in providing information to students, exhibiting good usability, satisfactory responses, and a high level of acceptance among the student body.