PRAIRIE VIEW, Texas (November 12, 2019) – This week, Prairie View A&M University began its deployment of Alexa Echo Dot to every freshmen dorm on campus. With the smart device, students can ask over 150 student-centric questions from categories like the registrar, treasury services, financial aid, admissions, athletics, housing, police, career services, academic advising, health and counseling, and the library, to name a few.

“Our goal was to bring all student-relevant information to the ‘MyPanther’ Alexa Skill,” said Midhat Asghar, assistant vice president for Information Resource Management, who is spearheading the project. “Not only will students be able to ask and get information regarding frequently asked questions, but they will also be able to receive other information currently available on Alexa platform, such as, “Alexa, set a reminder for laundry at 9 p.m.,” “Alexa, what is the weather today?”, “Alexa, what is the distance from the earth to the moon,’ etc.”

Students can set up the ‘MyPanther’ Skill on their personal Alexa devices following simple instructions. Upper-level students and PVAMU students living off campus can also take advantage of the new technology by setting it up on their smartphones.

“Many of the users are already using voice-enabled assistants such as Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant,” Asghar said. “We want to make sure our students can get the same experience with PVAMU information.”

Asghar said the Dots are not attached to personal accounts, and they will not be used to monitor user activity.

“Student privacy is of utmost importance at PVAMU. We cannot listen to student conversations with the Alexa Dot. The ‘MyPanther’ Skill will only activate once the user invokes it by saying ‘Alexa, ask My Panther,’” he said.

The Dots are being provided free of charge. However, if a device goes missing or gets broken, students are responsible for replacement costs.

“We also want to stress that with any artificial intelligence-based product, this piece of technology will only improve over time. And, students can help us improve our Skill and make it better by submitting any unanswered questions online,” said Asghar.

For more information about the ‘MyPanther’ Alexa Skill, click the links below.

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By Marchita Shilo