TechnologyOne rethinks AI-enabled student services

Guide for Students, developed by Brisbane-based TechnologyOne, is designed to assist university students to complete administrative tasks through conversational AI, allowing them to navigate enrolment, examination deferrals and course changes without manually searching through university systems.

The enterprise software provider is using agentic AI to transform how students interact with student management software, enabling them to ask questions in natural language and have the system execute workflows on their behalf.

Guide is designed to simplify the student experience by moving away from traditional web portals and complex navigation menus, said Executive VP - Education at TechnologyOne, Mark Jones.

"Everybody who works in higher education wants the student experience to be optimal," Jones said.

"The more seamless and intuitive it is, the greater the likelihood the student will succeed in what they're trying to do," Jones said.

Traditionally, students have been required to log into university portals, locate the relevant administrative function and work through the steps needed to complete a task.

Guide for Students instead provides a conversational interface through which students can explain what they need, receive relevant information and initiate processes without knowing where the required functionality sits within the underlying software.

The system can ask follow-up questions, identify appropriate options and execute multi-step workflows, drawing on information already held about each student, including their courses, schedules and assessment dates.

Jones said the approach represented a significant change from the early generations of web-based student administration.

"Guide simply asks you some questions, clarifies, and then gets the task done," he said.

Agentic AI extends across student services

TechnologyOne's approach relies on APIs underpinning its student management software.

The company uses a composable architecture, with APIs enabling different parts of the software to interact with one another.

Guide for Students uses those interfaces to connect conversational requests with existing system functionality, allowing the AI agent to coordinate multiple actions, not simply retrieve information or generate responses.

"Anything that you could normally do via another user interface, the student will be now able to do via an agentic workflow," Jones said.

Once a user explains what they want to accomplish, the system can determine the appropriate steps, make the relevant API decisions, provide progress updates and request additional information where necessary.

The result is an interface through which students can access administrative services without having to understand the structure of the software behind them.

The technology supports a broad range of tasks, including class registration, curriculum changes and course or programme adjustments.

Take a student who becomes ill shortly before an examination and needs to request a deferral, for instance.

Instead of searching for an examination administration page and navigating multiple steps, the student can tell Guide for Students they are unwell and ask about options for sitting the test at a later date.

The agent can then examine the student's schedule, assessment dates and applicable university rules before presenting possible alternatives.

After the student selects an option, the system can initiate the request and relevant approval process, and provide updates on its progress, reducing the administrative burden during a potentially stressful time for students.

The workflow uses information already available within the university's student management system, reducing the need for students to enter the same details repeatedly.

Guide could also assist students reconsidering their course selections or broader academic direction.

A student seeking advice could ask the agent to arrange an appointment with an academic adviser. The system could examine their academic history, identify the appropriate adviser and organise a meeting.

Where students are authorised to make changes themselves, the agent could also initiate those changes, incorporating any required approvals.

Data stays within protected environment

TechnologyOne has designed Guide for Students to operate within the same protected environment used for a university's existing student data.

Guide uses external AI models to help interpret conversational prompts and determine what a student is asking. However, student data will never be sent to external companies to train their models.

"Everything that we do with student data stays in that institution's domain," Jones explained.

Once the system interprets a student's request, it operates within the university's protected domain, applying the institution's existing safeguards, rules and configurations.

This approach is intended to combine the flexibility of conversational AI with the controls governing the university's existing software environment.

The agent can use information about a student's circumstances to identify relevant actions, but its ability to carry them out remains constrained by the permissions and processes established by the institution.

Jones described this as a distinction between using AI to make existing services easier to access and allowing an unrestricted system to make decisions outside institutional controls.

"We give you all the benefits of what AI can do to make it easier, make the interaction easier, and help predict what the student's trying to figure out," he said.

"We are always working within the confines of what the institution wants to be exposed, their rules, their workflows and their processes."

Guide is the layer that sits on top of a university's ERP and core systems rather than a replacement for their underlying administrative structures.

AI adoption builds on students' digital familiarity

Students were likely to find conversational interfaces relatively intuitive, Jones said, given their familiarity with chatbots and their existing exposure to generative AI.

While AI tools for completing coursework have seen a pendulum swing between being banned outright and adopted widely by educational institutions, Guide presents a holistic tool for all of students' administrative and organisational needs, optimising their learning environment.

Jones said the conversational model will reduce the need for students to learn how to navigate different menus or locate particular functions, freeing up more time for them to focus on their studies.

Guide supports natural-language interaction and language translation, allowing students to communicate in languages other than English and request responses in their preferred language.

For universities serving students from diverse linguistic backgrounds, that capability provides another way to make administrative services more accessible.