Overview

This project consists of two ChatBots - which we named ForeignPatriot Bots - with one shared intention: to unite the students of George Mason University by making social events and organizations more accessible to foreign exchange students. Our goal when coding them was to provide a simple and user-friendly way for international students to find clubs that relate to their culture, which can make them feel more at home amidst the already overwhelming process of adjusting to a new country.

The Benefits of AWS

A secondary goal within this project was to explore the differences and similarities between Python and Amazon Web Services (AWS) platforms. We first created the ForeignPatriot Bot in Python, which took several hours of research, trial-and-error, and work. Although the code was successful, with the limited time and experience we had, we agree that it's not the most aesthetically pleasing. So, we used AWS Lex to create a second ForeignPatriot Bot. This project was completed much faster and the results are much easier on the eyes! This proved that AWS has successfully made their user interface accessible and easy-to-use, even for new programmers.

Difficulties We Faced

Out of our four team members, none of us had used any AWS platforms before. This made navigating the applications somewhat difficult, especially since we had limited time to practice using it. However, we put our heads together and were able to develop a project that we're proud of. Similarly, none of us had coded a ChatBot into Python before, so it was definitely a new experience, but one that we learned a lot from.

Further Goals

We hope that the ForeignPatriot Bots can be further developed by being coded to offer more aid to foreign exchange students - such as showing them how to access tutors, help centers, and translators. We also hope that the Bots themselves can be translated to a variety of different languages, making it much more serviceable to a wider range of students at GMU. Also, since the AWS demo is just the user's experience of the ForeignPatriot Bot and the command to send an email is not written yet, we believe that this could be improved and make it so that this action is executed.