How OCCC Uses an AI Chatbot for LMS Student Support

My name is Lindsay Baker. I’m the Director of the Center for Learning and Teaching, which we call the CLT, at Oklahoma City Community College, also known as OCCC.

My role is primarily administrative and project management-focused for the college. I’m part of the Academic Affairs leadership team and serve on several subcommittees and committees. Here at OCCC, we also run an LMS help desk.

We use Moodle as our learning management system, and I help run the help desk. I also work with a team of instructional designers. We support faculty, staff, and students with Moodle, faculty training, professional development, course design, and related services.

With us today is our LMS administrator, Joshua Moore. He’ll also be answering some questions. His day-to-day work involves Moodle technical support, educational technology support, and more complex technical support.

My name is Joshua Moore. I’m the Learning Management System Administrator at Oklahoma City Community College.

On a day-to-day basis, I perform maintenance on the learning management system, provide technical support to students and faculty, and help integrate different software into the LMS, such as textbook platforms.

From the Center for Learning and Teaching perspective, we try our best to provide quality and effective LMS support for our faculty, staff, and students.

We always want to create an easy and seamless online experience for students. Our goal is to remove anything that could become a barrier to learning or a barrier to furthering their education.

I think that aligns directly with OCCC’s mission as well. We’re always looking for innovative solutions for technical support and ways to make things easier for everyone. That’s where this initiative comes in.

Developing and training a chatbot has been a team effort, and Josh has played a major role in that. As our LMS administrator, he has taken the initiative to train the chatbot and continuously improve it.

He has spent a lot of time on the chatbot, and it has truly been a team effort to make sure we answer the common support questions students ask.

We also named the chatbot together, which was a fun team activity. His name is Professor Turing.

Professor Turing falls directly in line with the CLT’s mission to provide innovative technology and support, as well as OCCC’s broader mission.

Here in the CLT, we have specific office hours. We are available Monday through Friday, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. We also have a limited number of staff in the office.

Because of that, students may have to wait to get their questions answered if someone is not available. If they need assistance outside our Monday through Friday, 8-to-5 schedule, they usually have to wait until we are back in the office.

The chatbot provides more availability for students through 24/7 support. Some students may also feel anxious about reaching out for support, so the chatbot gives them another way to get basic technical problems and questions answered.

The highest student engagement we’ve seen with the chatbot is definitely at the beginning of a semester or term.

The chatbot is designed to answer basic questions that students need help with right away. We see a significant increase in engagement during those times, especially at the beginning of the semester.

It also helps us provide 24/7 availability, which is difficult when you have a small team and limited resources. The chatbot has allowed us to fill that need for students.

It also helps us provide faster response times. We can rely on the chatbot to answer basic questions quickly so students can take their exams, avoid technical issues, find their courses, access their textbooks, and resolve the common problems they typically face during the first week of classes.

We chose Kommunicate because it is affordable. When I was looking at different chatbot platforms, I also found that Kommunicate had an easy-to-understand user interface.

It was versatile, and I liked that the integration used basic HTML injection, which we already use often with Moodle and other platforms. It was something we were already familiar with and knew we could implement easily.

Students mostly ask how to find their courses. We also receive many questions about ProctorU, which is our online proctoring software, as well as McGraw Hill Connect, one of the most commonly used textbook platforms across different classes and departments here at OCCC.

The chatbot helps answer many basic questions about navigating these platforms.

Even when we first launched the chatbot, a few faculty members reached out to us because they were excited about the name Professor Turing. We had named him after Alan Turing, and they were excited about that.

We also received direct comments and feedback from students, especially in the beginning, and we still receive feedback now.

One student told us, “It is really easy to navigate and to get help with what I need.”

Another student shared a longer piece of feedback. She was completing an exam late at night when she was kicked out of the exam. She was able to access the chatbot using the icon on the Moodle homepage.

She said it was honestly a lifesaver because it was already late, and she needed immediate assistance due to the exam due date. That was her feedback after using Professor Turing for the first time.

Knowing that a student could get help at the exact time they needed it, based on their schedule, and could get back into an exam they otherwise may not have been able to complete, showed us early on that this was something that would work for us.

It also showed us that the chatbot could help with common support issues.

We also have a strong chatbot rating. We have data from the Kommunicate platform that helps us understand student feedback and satisfaction.

It is difficult to say exactly how much workload the chatbot has reduced, but when we look at the data Kommunicate provides, we can see that students use the chatbot heavily during the first week of the semester.

Many of those questions are ones students would typically call the CLT for.

The chatbot is available 24/7, which is one of the main features we appreciate. Students are not restricted to the 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. hours when we are available in the office.

We can also collect data about student satisfaction. Students can rate their chatbot experience as great, average, or poor. We can use that feedback to make better adjustments to the chatbot and improve student support.

The chatbot is especially helpful for answering common questions about Moodle navigation and common technical issues. It gives students immediate responses, which is invaluable.

It is hard to measure exactly how much it has impacted our staff workload, but it has definitely helped with student support.

Since launching Professor Turing in June 2024, we have had more than 3,000 conversations.

That represents a lot of student conversations, including questions like, “I can’t find my textbook,” “I don’t know how to email my professor,” and “How do I find my course?”

The chatbot can answer those questions quickly, which has been very helpful for us.

It also helps with more complex issues by pointing students in the right direction.

There will always be complex technical issues that need human support. Professor Turing may not be able to solve every issue, but it can tell students where to go. It can direct them to the Center for Learning and Teaching and provide our phone number, email address, booking link, and other contact information.

At large institutions like colleges and universities, it can be difficult for students to know where to go for help. Professor Turing helps with that as well.

As of 2025, from January to April 9, we have had 459 conversations.

The highest number of conversations happened on January 21, when we had 38 conversations in one day. That was the first day of the spring semester, including both the early eight-week and 16-week terms.

For this year so far, our customer satisfaction score is 8.33 out of 10. That is calculated based on average ratings, where students can rate conversations as great, average, or poor.

In total, since implementing the chatbot, we have had more than 3,000 conversations with students.

I would tell other institutions to go for it if they can.

A chatbot can help with limited staffing, limited resources, and limited office hours. It can also help with common, repetitive questions.

For example, I don’t have to answer the same question about ProctorU 20 times a day. The chatbot can handle some of that for us, which is very helpful.

It is definitely worth the time and effort it takes to train the chatbot, purchase it, and implement it.

Chatbots are also familiar to students. They see them everywhere. It is one way for us to keep up with higher education trends, whether for LMS support, technical support, websites, or other services.

It is important for us to stay up to date with technology and meet students where they are, with the support they need.

You can also serve as an example for other departments. Our marketing team asked us about a chatbot for their website when they launched their new website, and we could potentially help with that.

We have also helped the library train their chatbot recently during their testing stage.

That kind of collaboration is another benefit. You can serve as an example and provide support for other departments within your institution.

‍