How to Build Chatbots and Make Money

Description

• Course name: IBM: CB0103EN - How to Build Chatbots and Make Money
• Course end date: 31 July 2019
• Price: Free, verified certificate $99USD
• Institution: IBM
• Level: Introductory

IBM: CB0103EN - How to Build Chatbots and Make Money is a course offered by IBM on the edX platform as an open course. There are two paths to progress: with verified certificate or auditing the course. When I registered on 14 August 2018, I opted to go with the auditing option, which means that I could progress without having to pay and at the speed I wanted.

UCEM had considered building a chatbot to support students with frequent queries. However, the sum of money quoted to get a proof of concept setup was too expensive for us to trial. So, when I saw the course on edX platform I informed my team members in the Learning Technology Innovation team and we all started working through the materials.

Following the course, I developed a chatbot called Nikki that was able to respond to FAQs about Studying with UCEM. In the October 2018 quarterly meeting of the Online Learning Research Centre, which I Chair at UCEM, we presented a talk about chatbots and demonstrated our chatbots. The session was at capacity (40 participants). However, we did not have enough time to integrate the chatbot so we demonstrated it using IBM Watson Assistant interface.

Evidence

Reflection

I have reflected on my experience of creating a chatbot in my personal blog post Creating a chatbot with IBM Watson at the time of creating the chatbot.

Now looking back at that experience the most important thing for me at that point was to show my institution that this can be done. When a vendor quoted a huge sum of money for the proof of concept, the idea of using a chatbot was dropped. But having heard of the success of Becky the chatbot I wanted to give it another go. So given the opportunities today to learn with open online courses it was very easy to start from the beginning and create a chatbot.

I am hugely proud to have taken the initiative to learn something new, share the opportunity to learn with other like minded people, creating a chatbot, integrating it with a website and giving the whole institution a chance to see it in action. This was my very first time using Watson services and installing and setting up a plugin for a WordPress site. It did take me few tries to get it right - since the course was published, IBM had changed their IBM Watson Conversation service to IBM Watson Assistant. The interfaces were different and when you try to follow the video instructions it wasn't quite the same on the new interface. Also the at the time I tried to integrate with the website, the WordPress plugin had not been updated to work with the new IBM Watson Assistant updates. So it took me a while to find the reasons why it wasn't working by going through forum posts and then waiting until it was updated.

Being a member of the Learning Technology Innovation team I believe it is my responsibility to show the possibilities of new technology and how they can be applied in our context. As a result of this demonstration we have had huge interest in creating chatbots especially for the student services.

The learning point from this experience is that there are so much knowledge out there. You only need to know how to find the information. If you persevere you can get there.