Using a 3D Animated, Natural Speech, Logic-Based Agent as a School's Web Site Guide and Course Advisor

The use of web sites in University schools around the world has become more important than ever. Functionality has grown beyond simple presence on the web: students use them to check course schedules, enrollment, payment and several other administrative and learning activities. Because of this reason, the interaction and communication between these web sites and its users must be pleasant, useful, efficient and dynamic, considering the high volume of information that they usually contain. This paper proposes the use of an animated character (agent) which serves as a web site host and establishes communication with the user through a series of questions and answers using natural language through a text box. The user receives the agent’s answer in text and audio (voice) also in natural language (spanish and english versions are available). This agent serves as a course advisor for the student [5], suggesting courses to enroll and answering questions about them. The agent can also guide users through the web site [8], allowing them to access specific parts of the site faster since web pages are loaded by the agent considering the information asked. This guidance is accomplished by analyzing the data generated by the questions and answers between the agent and the user using Amzi Prolog.