Case Study: Penn State World Campus improves academic advising efficiency with Google for Education

Penn State World Campus pioneers using AI for academic advising support services

Penn State World Campus, part of Penn State, needed a way to give its online students faster answers to routine academic advising questions while reducing the time advisers spent repeatedly gathering the same information. Working with Google for Education and Google Cloud tools, including Dialogflow, the university explored how AI could support flexible, scalable student services for learners balancing jobs, family, and military service.

Google for Education, through Google Cloud and partner Quantiphi, helped Penn State World Campus build a virtual assistant that automatically handles common emails about re-enrollment, change of major or campus, and deferments. The system is about 86% accurate at identifying intent and generating correct responses, while automatically routing out-of-scope questions to advisers with student details pre-collected; this has improved response efficiency, standardized answers, and freed advisers to spend more time on higher-value student support.

Penn State World Campus

Dawn Coder

Director of Academic Advising & Student Disability Services