Automating Chalkboard support processes using a chatbot

Applied project submitted to the Department of Computer Science, Ashesi University, in partial fulfillment of Bachelor of Science degree in Management Information Systems, April 2019This project seeks to apply natural language processing techniques to automate the support processes of Chalkboard Education, a startup in Ghana. The company has many users but currently has only two operations personnel responsible for responding to customer queries. Their support processes can be made easier with the use of a chatbot. The project references work from early chatbots like ELIZA and Cleverbot as well as more recent ones like MOOCBuddy and SuperAgent. The chatbot is built on RASA Natural Language Interpreter and uses third party APIs like Twilio and Database connections to mirror human support processes. Upon implementation, the chatbot is suitably able to perform the repetitive human tasks the operations personnel were carrying out, successfully and in shorter time. In the event that the chatbot cannot handle a query, the problem is forwarded to the aforementioned operations personnel. Upon evaluation, it was discovered that the chatbot has could improve its accuracy and effectiveness with techniques such as adding more training data and using different language models for embeddings. In the future, the chatbot can be implemented via a USSD application to enable Chalkboard capitalize on the prevalence of USSD application in Africa.Ashesi Universit

Uniform: The Form Validation Language

Digital forms are becoming increasingly more prevalent but the ease of creation is not. Web Forms are difficult to produce and validate. This design project seeks to simplify this process. This project is comprised of two parts: a logical programming language (Uniform) and a web application. Uniform is a language that allows its users to define logical relationships between web elements and apply simple rules to individual inputs to both validate the form and manipulate its components depending on user input. Uniform provides an extra layer of abstraction to complex coding. The web app implements Uniform to provide business-level programmers with an interface to build and manage forms. Users will create form templates, manage form instances, and cooperatively complete forms through the web app. Uniform’s development is ongoing, it will receive continued support and is available as open-source. The web application is software owned and maintained by HP Inc. which will be developed further before going to market

Improving sales force performance through mobile applications

Estágio realizado na Novabase e orientado pelo Eng.º Pedro FaúlhaTese de mestrado integrado. Engenharia Informátca e Computação. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 200

Preliminary design enhancement by incorporating set- based design principles and a navigator

The need for improvement of Product Development (PD) processes has been demonstrated by a high demand for the aerospace products to be developed quicker and cheaper. Set-Based Design (SBD) can improve the ability to respond faster to customers’ requirements by developing a set of design solutions for possible future product orders in parallel. In SBD participants practise SBCE (Set-Based Concurrent Engineering) by reasoning, developing and communicating about sets of solutions in parallel. As the design progresses, they gradually narrow their respective sets of solutions based on the knowledge gained. As they narrow, they commit to staying within the sets so that others can rely on their communication (Sobek et al, 1999). This research aims to develop logical guidelines for the selection of the PD tools and methods to enable the effective application of the SBD process model guided by a computerized tool, called ‘SBD Navigator’. An integration of the SBD good practices into the collaborator’s PD processes is believed to reduce the possibility of the negative design iteration and to reduce PD time thus providing financial benefits. Understanding the selection of PD methods and tools within manufacturing companies is a starting point of this research. It reveals main causes of poor incorporation of PD methods and tools in the preliminary design phase that might stop businesses from gaining a full range of benefits out of the SBD process model. As time goes on, PD becomes more difficult to manage due to the necessity of the collaboration among business participants in order to create complex and well integrated products. This research project has employed one of the deliverables from the CONGA (Concept Optimisation of Next Generation Aircraft) project which is the SBD process model customized by the collaborating company – Rolls-Royce plc. The RR-SBD process model is presented in chapter 3. [cont.

A Consumers Guide to Grants Management Systems 2016

This report has been released by Grants Managers Network (GMN) and Technology Affinity Group (TAG), with research conducted by Idealware. The report compares 29 grants management systems across 174 requirements criteria, looks at what each system does, and compares the strengths and weaknesses of each system available to grantmakers. The report looks at how they stack up against high-level categories and details the functionality of each system against specific criteria important to the grant-making community

Developing courseware to support online discussion

Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2005.Includes bibliographical references (p. 55).For my Master of Engineering thesis, I designed and implemented an online discussion forum in an attempt to improve student learning. Aided with the help of Professor Jonathon Cummings 15.351 course (Introduction to Innovation and Entrepreneurship), I measured student and peer-to-peer interaction via online discussion boards and user-generated interest in the subject matter. Based on the data received from this discussion board, I have found that students have their own optimal learning environments, and that anonymity can affect the way students interact with one another.by Benjamin Luke Wang.M.Eng

How to Use Litigation Technology to Prepare & Present Your Case at Trial October 27, 2021

Meeting proceedings of a seminar by the same name, held October 27, 2021

A requirements engineering method for COTS-based systems development

An increasing number of organisations are procuring off-the-shelf software products from commercial suppliers. However, there has been a lack of methods and software tools for such requirements acquisition, product selection and product procurement. This thesis proposes a new method called PORE (Procurement-Oriented Requirements Engineering) which integrates existing requirements engineering techniques with those from knowledge engineering, feature analysis, multi-criteria decision-making and argumentation approaches to address the lack of guidance for acquiring requirements to enable evaluation and selection of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software. PORE is designed in part from conclusions drawn from real-world case studies of requirements acquisition for complex software product selection. Such studies are reported in this thesis. The PORE method is part goal-driven and part context-driven, in that it exploits models of the candidate COTS software and customer requirements as well as process goals to guide a requirements engineering team. The method's approach and mechanisms is demonstrated using a well-known commercial electronic-mail system. A number of studies are presented to provide validation for the method. These include three studies in three different organisations to select COTS software products and one study of requirements engineering experts to elicit their knowledge. The results from these studies demonstrated that the method is usable and effective. The thesis concludes with a discussion of future work to improve the PORE method and future research directions on requirements engineering for COTS-based systems development