1 MACHINE LEARNING CHATBOT FOR EDUCATION SEARCH PURPOSE IN DUBLIN Ravjeet Singh Dari 10510317 Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Data Analytics at Dublin Business School Supervisor: Professor Shubham Sharma January, 2020 2 DECLARATION I, Ravjeet Singh Dari a student of Master of Science in Data Analytics at Dublin Business School. I declare that this dissertation has not been previously presented to any other university or institution to pursue degree or diploma. All my work in this dissertation are truly original and never collaborated to any other person. In addition to this, I have reference all the sources which was used in this thesis. I sincerely obey the rules and regulation decided by Dublin Business School for dissertation. Also, I do not break General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) norms. Signed: Ravjeet Singh Dari Dublin Business School Student Number: 10510317 Date: 6th January 2020 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT My sincere thanks to Professor Shubham Sharma for her guide and support throughout the dissertation period. She supervised me in such a way that my dissertation report shall remain in boundaries of rules and regulation decided by the institution. But, the lion’s share of my gratitude goes to Professor Abhishek Kaushik. Without his guidance my dissertation could not be completed. He manage to give some time from his busy schedule whenever I asked for help. His knowledge removed all the doubts and obstacles that came across during this journey. In addition to this, I am thankful to all the other professors of Dublin Business School for their teaching and to share knowledge with me. Moreover, I am very much grateful to all the participants who participated in user evaluation test and for their valuable feedback. 4 ABSTRACT This dissertation is about an artificial intelligence chatbot which act as a virtual assistant for the students who are looking for education in Dublin. In real-world scenario a student register in a foreign education agency to pursue education in abroad. Many a time it was observed that the education counsellor could not give adequate amount of time in guiding the student either due to shortage of time or lack of knowledge. Consequently, it becomes a hurdle in admission process and for applying student visa. In order to remove this hurdle the dissertation contribute a conversational bot to assist students regarding education search and information related to any institutions or universities in Dublin. The conversational bot was been developed in Python programming language using machine learning algorithm and natural language processing. According to the participants in user evaluation test the voice feature in bot makes more interactive for communication. 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1.INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………………………..…..09 1.1 Background of the Dissertation……………………………………………………………………………..…….09 1.2 Existing Problem……………………………………………………………………………………………………..…..09 1.3 Research Questions……………………………………………………………………………………………………..10 1.4 Aim and Objective……………………………………………………………………………………………………....10 1.5 Strategy plan of study………………………………………………………………………………………………….11 1.6 Scope of the dissertation……………………………………………………………………………………………..12 1.7 Major contribution of thesis……………………………………………………………………………………..…13 2.LITERATURE REVIEW…………………………………………………………………………………..14 2.1 Purpose of chatbot……………………………………………………………………………………………………...14 2.2. Classification and different approaches……………………………………………………………………...14 2.3 Evolution of chatbot…………………………………………………………………………………………………….15 2.4 Horizon of chatbot in online domain……………………………………………………………………………16 2.5 Horizon of chatbot in education domain……………………………………………………………………..18 2.6 Horizon of chatbot in healthcare………………………………………………………………………………...19 2.7 Horizon of chatbot in community domain…………………………………………………………………...20 2.8 Rationale of the research…………………………………………………………………………………………….21 3.METHODOLOGY……………………………………………………………………………………….…22 3.1 Outline…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………22 3.2 Planning of the project…………………………………………………………………………………………………22 3.3 Data collection and pre-processing………………………………………………………………………………23 3.4 Data flow diagram (DFD)………………………………………………………………………………………………24 3.4.1 DFD Level 0………………………………………………………………………………………………………….24 3.4.2 DFD Level 1…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..25 3.4.3 Use Case Diagram……………………………………………………………………………………..………….26 3.5 Activity Diagram……………………………………………………………………………………………………………27 3.6 Architecture………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….28 3.6.1 Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………………………………28 3.6.2 Proposed system design……………………………………………………………………………………….28 3.7 Proposed Method…………………………………………………………………………………………………………29 3.8 Hardware Specification…………………………………………………………………………………………………31 3.9 Software Specification…………………………………………………………………………………………………..31 4. RESULT……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………32 4.1 User evaluation test………………………………………………………………………………………….…………..32 4.2 Experiment……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………32 4.3 Participant feedback……………………………………………………………………………………………………..32 4.4 GUI of Chatbot……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..42 5. DISCUSSION…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….43 5.1 Review Questions………………………………………………………………………………………………………….43 6 5.2 Counter to Review Questions……………………………………………………………………………….…….43 5.3 General Questions………………………………………………………………………………………………….…..43 5.4 Ethical Questions…………………………………………………………………………………………………….….44 6. CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….….46 7. FUTURE WORK…………………………………………………………………………………………………….…….….47 7.1 Feature……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…….…47 7.2 Data…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….….…..47 7.3 Voice………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…….….47 7.4 Artificial Intelligence Algorithm…………………………………………………………………………….….….47 REFERENCES……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….….….48 APPENDIX………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….……...52 Appendix A: Case Study…………………………………………………………………………….…………...52 Appendix B: Screenshot of backend code………………………………………………….……….….53 Appendix C: Screenshot of backend output……………………………………………….….……….55 Appendix D: Screenshot of frontend code………………………………………………….….……….56 Appendix E: Screenshot of frontend output……………………………………………….….……....59 7 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Strategy plan of study (Source: Created by Author)…………………………………………....11 Figure 2: Planner (Source: A template in canva.com)………………………………………………………...23 Figure 3: Slice of Dataset (Source: students.dbs.ie)…………………………………………………………..24 Figure 4: DFD Level 0 (Source: Created by author)…………………………………………………….……….25 Figure 5: DFD Level 1 (Source: Created by author)………………………………………………………….….26 Figure 6: Use Case Diagram (Source: Created by author)…………………………………………………..27 Figure 7: Activity Diagram (Source: Created by author)……………………………………………………..28 Figure 8: Architecture design (Source: Created by author)…………………………………………….....29 Figure 9: Question 1 (Source: Created by author)………………………………………………………………32 Figure 10: Feedback of question 1 (Source: Created by author)………………………………………...33 Figure 11: Feedback of question 2 (Source: Created by author)………………………………………...33 Figure 12: Feedback of question 3 (Source: Created by author)………………………………………...34 Figure 13: Feedback of question 4 (Source: Created by author)…………………………………………34 Figure 14: Feedback of question 5 (Source: Created by author)…………………………………………35 Figure 15: Question 6 (Source: Created by author)…………………………………………………………….35 Figure 16: Feedback of question 6 (Source: Created by author)…………………………………………35 Figure 17: Feedback of question 7 (Source: Created by author)…………………………………………36 Figure 18: Question 8 (Source: Created by author)…………………………………………………………….36 Figure 19: Feedback of question 8 (Source: Created by author)………………………………………….37 Figure 20: Question 9 (Source: Created by author)…………………………………………………………….37 Figure 21: Feedback of question 9 (Source: Created by author)…………………………………………38 Figure 22: Feedback of question 10 (Source: Created by author)……………………………………….38 Figure 23: Feedback of question 11 (Source: Created by author)……………………………………….39 Figure 24: Feedback of question 12 (Source: Created by author)……………………………………….39 Figure 25: Feedback of question 13 (Source: Created by author)………………………………………..40 Figure 26: Feedback of question 14 (Source: Created by author)………………………………………..40 Figure 27: Question 15 (Source: Created by author)…………………………………………………………..41 Figure 28: Feedback of question 15 (Source: Created by author)………………………………………..41 Figure 29: Graphical user interface (Source: Created by author)…………………………………………42 8 LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Laptop hardware specification…………………………………………………………………………….31 Table 2: Software specification………………………………………………………………………………………….31 9 1. INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background of the Dissertation: It has been observed that technology had played a vital role in providing various inventions to make human life easier. Such inventions include ‘chatbot’ which continue to strive to solve human problems instantly. Chatbot or conversational bot or one can simply say bot is a software application that performs automated conversation with humans. Conversation can be either text, voice or both. Various e-commerce companies like Sephora, eBay, H&M and Aerie used chatbots to enhance the quality of customer service and to increase the sales. On the other hand, the e-commerce giants like Amazon, Walmart, Alibaba Group etc. are in engage to develop chatbots so to