How does it work
The bot sends messages to the user as soon as new points are added to the Distance Learning Center’s change log. At ITMO University, we rely on the BARS grade-ranking system, which means that the student’s competencies are graded on a 100-point scale (these results are converted into the traditional five-grade scale for official documents), and each Faculty has its own ranking of the best students who have the highest points.
The bot checks the information from the Distance Learning Center (DLC) every five minutes. This means that the user learns of new results in a most timely manner. The Distance Learning Center offers the opportunity to notify students of their results via email only; according to the bot’s developer, he got the idea of @deifmobot last year, when an acquaintance of his worried too much about her exam results and was constantly checking with the Distance Learning Center. Therefore, he wrote an algorithm that would do it, and the bot informed her of the results as soon as they got published.
“The Distance Learning Center online platform is a good instrument, yet the bot will allow the students to get data from the system a lot quicker. There are many more ideas on how to make the bot even better, but they require closer cooperation with the Center’s administration,” comments Vitaliy Guryn.
For now, the bot is mostly used by students from the Information Technologies and Programming Faculty and the Faculty of Laser and Light Engineering; students learn about the bot’s existence by word of mouth only.
How to add the bot?
You can find the bot using the common Telegram search engine. Yet, to synchronize it with data from DLC, you’ll have to enter the login and password you use to sign into the Center’s system. According to Vitaliy Guryn, this requirement scares some of the potential users away; for instance, more than 450 users showed interest in the bot over the past year, but only 327 authorized it.
This is why one of Vitaliy’s propositions is to do it so that the bot could be linked to one’s account on DLCs online platform. This way, the users won’t have to enter their authorization data to use the bot - all they’ll have to do is click on a special link in the system’s Settings section.
What’s more, if that would be the platform sending data to the bot, it will greatly simplify both the bot’s operation and the system load. For now, the bot has to authorize in the system anew every time it checks the results.
Potential additional functions
The bot can be improved with additional functions that will make tracking one’s performance easier, as well as motivate students to study better. All of these upgrades are to be optional, as some students won’t like the idea of getting some 20 notifications every day.
1. Getting the schedule for the current day, as well as schedule for the end-of-semester exams. The bot can send the user the schedule for the current day by default and the schedule for any day by request. During the end-of-semester exams, the bot can mail out information about consultations, as well as remind about each upcoming exam.
2. Notifications about changes in one’s position in the students’ rankings. Some students might want to be notified when their position in the student rankings changes. Also, @deifmobot can send motivating messages and stickers if one’s ranking gets worse, or congratulations on its improvement.
3. Getting interim results. Reports on one’s interim results can be sent to them every month or term, or on the user’s request. This information can help one learn about the subjects they have no problems with and the ones they have to pay more attention to, thus improving their performance.
4. Urgent notices mail out. The bot can be used by administrations of different university structures to send urgent notices to the students, like those about cancellation of certain lectures or important events. It will also be possible to target particular mail outs at certain groups: for instance, some messages will be sent to students of a particular lecturer only, others - to the students of a particular group, etc.
5. Searching for a vacant classroom. On request, the bot can send the students a list of vacant classrooms. It often happens that students, members of the CodeX club, for instance, need to gather and discuss certain issues, and searching for a vacant classroom can take much time.
“The current version of the bot has already been working steadily for a year,” notes Vitaliy Guryn.
