Fresh­men Class Try­ing Out New Soft­ware

MISHAWAKA – Fresh­men or trans­fer stu­dents to Bethel are prob­a­bly fa­mil­iar with Wil­helm, who is not only Bethel Uni­ver­si­ty’s mas­cot but also the name of the au­to­matic text-mes­sag­ing soft­ware, a tool de­signed to aid stu­dents and to help staff gather in­for­ma­tion over the course of the year.

The Wil­helm tex­ting soft­ware was in­tro­duced to Bethel in the fall of 2019. The soft­ware it­self was de­signed three years ago by Ed­Sights, a com­pany that fo­cuses on “non-cog­ni­tive data” col­lec­tion, ac­cord­ing to its web­site. The sys­tem is built to take in­for­ma­tion based on the re­sponses given by stu­dents and send it to both Bethel and Ed­Sights. How­ever, all the mes­sages from Wil­helm were specif­i­cally cre­ated by and for Bethel Uni­ver­si­ty’s use, and all of the re­sponses are marked as Bethel’s once they ar­rive at Ed­Sights. If any of the re­sponses are po­ten­tially wor­ri­some, Ed­Sights re­ceives the mes­sage, flags it, and sends an email to Bethel al­most in­stan­ta­neously. This al­lows staff on cam­pus to re­act quickly to any pos­si­ble is­sue that some­one is hav­ing and start try­ing to re­solve it.

If stu­dents have re­ceived con­fus­ing mes­sages, here is a pos­si­ble rea­son why: the sys­tem searches the re­sponses to Wil­helm for cer­tain key­words, like “sad” or “good,” as well as re­sponses to yes or no ques­tions. The sys­tem also re­flects on the in­for­ma­tion pro­vided in a sur­vey that all fresh­men and trans­fer stu­dents took at the

be­gin­ning of the se­mes­ter. Us­ing these meth­ods, it de­ter­mines the best re­sponse to give the stu­dent. Longer an­swers, though in­nocu­ous in a stu­den­t’s in­ten­tion, could prompt an un­de­sired re­sponse if any con­flict­ing key­words are pre­sent.

For ex­am­ple, if a ques­tion is asked about how well a stu­dent is ad­just­ing to life at Bethel, the stu­dent could give a three-sen­tence re­sponse talk­ing about how great every­thing is while men­tion­ing offhand­edly that the ac­com­mo­da­tions were “bad.” What the sys­tem will do is look specif­i­cally at the key­word “bad” and Wil­helm will de­liver a re­sponse based off of that one key­word, not the en­tirety of the mes­sage.

To avoid that kind of con­fu­sion with Wil­helm, stick to shorter re­sponses or make sure the re­sponse is clearly lean­ing one di­rec­tion and om­mit con­flict­ing terms.

The team at Ed­Sights has been hav­ing a great time see­ing all the re­sponses from Bethel stu­dents. They’re en­joy­ing all the funny re­sponses, jokes, and even memes that the new Pi­lots are send­ing their way. Oc­ca­sion­ally, Wil­helm will even re­spond in kind, send­ing a funny pic­ture or gif in re­turn.

The Stu­dent Co­or­di­na­tor and Aca­d­e­mic Spe­cial­ist, Su­san Mat­te­son, in the Cen­ter for Aca­d­e­mic Suc­cess, said that Bethel Uni­ver­sity has been one of Ed­Sights’ fa­vorite stu­dent bod­ies to in­ter­act with; the friendly and wel­com­ing na­ture of the in­com­ing class has re­ally im­pressed them, and, for that, new stu­dents should give them­selves a pat on the back.

Wil­helm

A staff mem­ber of the Cen­ter for Aca­d­e­mic Suc­cess is act­ing as an on­go­ing test sub­ject for the soft­ware, try­ing dif­fer­ent re­sponses and an­swer­ing ques­tions

un­ortho­doxly in an ef­fort to see how Wil­helm will re­spond. While there will be con­sis­tent new re­sponses, the sys­tem will learn and adapt to Bethel Uni­ver­sity and con­tinue to help new stu­dents ad­just to life on cam­pus.

Any stu­dents ex­pe­ri­enc­ing prob­lems with Wil­helm or with fur­ther ques­tions on the pro­gram should con­tact the Cen­ter for Aca­d­e­mic Suc­cess, lo­cated in the base­ment of the Aca­d­e­mic Cen­ter, just down the hall from the Learn­ing Com­mons.