WUOLKI
WUOLKI
WUOLKI – smart support for all aspects of your studies at the University of Oldenburg
Building on the areas of development identified in the ‘Participate@UOL’ project, the prototype AI chatbot‘WUOLKI’(Welcometo the University of Oldenburg AI) was developed with the involvement of the USL support unit. As part of the project, the aim was formulated to make access to the wide range of support services for students at the University of Oldenburg as accessible as possible. As students are increasingly using various AI tools in their day-to-day university life, but these tools have so far failed to reflect the university’s specific support services, the idea arose to develop a dedicated AI system tailored to the university. WUOLKI is intended to help promote student participation and support students in actively shaping university learning and experiential spaces.
The participatory development process
The development process was initiated in the summer semester of 2025 in collaboration with student staff members involved in the project and the USL support unit. To ensure the transparency, controllability and explainability of the AI system, a defined data pool was used, provided by the participating organisations BIS (Library and Information System) and ZSKB (Study and Career Counselling Service). This includes, amongst other things, information on courses as well as teaching and learning spaces.
The chatbot serves as a prototype support service for students. For example, it enables users to search specifically for courses, teaching and learning spaces, and other support services offered by the participating institutions via text or voice input, thereby making the relevant services quickly and directly accessible.
Future prospects
The aim is to expand the range of applications in the future to cover further areas relating to studying at the University of Oldenburg.
During the development phase, students were surveyed on potential use cases for AI-based support systems at the University of Oldenburg. Initial findings from this survey point to additional needs, including in the areas of academic and career counselling, course-specific AI tutors, and AI-supported provision of scholarships and labour market-oriented development opportunities. As the chatbot is currently still in the beta phase, it is available on request at present. However, it is planned to make it publicly available in the near future.