New Perspectives in Science Education

Academic advising is a crucial component of student success in higher education, providing guidance on course selection, program requirements, navigating institutional policies, and much more. It significantly influences students' academic performance, retention, and educational experience. However, current advising practices often face challenges such as limited accessibility, inconsistent information, miscommunication, and high administrative workloads. To address these challenges, this paper introduces Advisely, a web-based platform that employs GPT-4, a large language model, to facilitate academic advising. The system integrates the AI-powered chatbot with a comprehensive knowledge base covering academic policies, regulations, and institutional requirements. Advisely is designed to support students, academic advisors, and faculty by providing reliable, context-aware guidance on various topics, including course selection, program requirements, and policy interpretation. The platform’s architecture features a decoupled front-end interface and back-end knowledge base, allowing institutions to update policies and rules without disrupting the user experience. This separation ensures scalability and flexibility, enabling each school to integrate its resources, regulations, and program-specific information. The paper discusses different use cases that illustrate Advisely’s practical application, such as guiding students through course enrollment, clarifying graduation requirements, and aiding advisors in providing consistent advice. An initial evaluation assesses the system's performance regarding response accuracy and consistency. Findings suggest that Advisely significantly enhances the academic advising process, reducing administrative workload and improving access to information. Feedback from early users informs future development, aiming to expand functionality and refine the chatbot's capabilities for broader deployment.