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Grätzelbot: Social Companion Technology for Community Building among University Freshmen

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Chatbot Research and Design (CONVERSATIONS 2020)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 12604))

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Abstract

Proper onboarding procedures for freshmen (first-semester students) at the university have many positive effects, especially the increase in retention rates. This paper presents Grätzelbot, a chatbot designed to help with onboarding freshmen by means of connecting them in a network-building 12-day scavenger hunt. The onboarding concept that led to Grätzelbot was developed in a participatory design process together with students, and implemented during the start of the semester with more than 100 participants. The evaluation results revealed that the students felt more familiar with the faculty building and the university campus after the scavenger hunt, also met other students, made new friends, and, by participating, their sense of belonging to the student community got stronger. As a social companion fostering relatedness among its users, Grätzelbot serves as an example for the reach and benefits of Social Software.

“Grätzel” is a local Viennese colloquial term for one’s adjacent neighborhood in the city, and rhymes with “pretzel”.

This paper is partially based on material created by the second author in his Master’s thesis [28].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Cooperative Systems Research Group, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

    Christian Löw, Lukas Moshuber & Albert Rafetseder

Authors
  1. Christian Löw
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  2. Lukas Moshuber
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  3. Albert Rafetseder
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Christian Löw .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. SINTEF, Oslo, Norway

    Asbjørn Følstad

  2. University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Theo Araujo

  3. CERTH-ITI, Thessaloniki, Greece

    Symeon Papadopoulos

  4. University of Leicester, Leicester, UK

    Effie L.-C. Law

  5. University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

    Ewa Luger

  6. University of Agder, Grimstad, Norway

    Morten Goodwin

  7. University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Petter Bae Brandtzaeg

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Löw, C., Moshuber, L., Rafetseder, A. (2021). Grätzelbot: Social Companion Technology for Community Building among University Freshmen. In: Følstad, A., et al. Chatbot Research and Design. CONVERSATIONS 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12604. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68288-0_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68288-0_8

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-68287-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-68288-0

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