A chance to travel

Chance

(Guilhem, Poutrain-Mari, Université Paris-Saclay) (Lisa, Galan-Sunyach, Université Paris-Cité) (Jean, Dersoir, Université Paris-Saclay)

Institutional communication & information

Our AI application is based on our own experience with research and planning during an international exchange program through Erasmus. It can be particularly difficult to find the necessary documents, guidelines, and deadlines for applying to an exchange program. The purpose of this AI is precisely to help organize an exchange from an administrative standpoint, as well as to assist with finding housing, applying for a visa, and more.

We are students, and we have noticed that many of us would like to study abroad on an exchange program, yet only a small number actually manage to do so. We believe this decline is largely due to the difficulty of organizing such a trip. The university’s mobility office provides most of the necessary information, but it is often difficult to access. Additionally, the websites of foreign universities (in our case, non-French ones) rarely provide translated and detailed information, so students must conduct extensive research to find the information they need. This, combined with tight deadlines, often causes students to give up. Furthermore, financial aid for exchange programs is often substantial but far too little known, which leads students with the tightest budgets to give up. Yet, an exchange abroad is an enriching, stimulating experience that all students deserve to have access to. This effort to research and summarize information can easily be implemented via a chatbot or app that provides reminders and essential information. This AI could help broaden the cultural horizons and open the minds of many students, which could have a significant impact on their academic engagement and their personal and professional development.

Through this challenge, our team aims first and foremost to develop our analytical skills and stimulate our curiosity, particularly in the field of AI, where we are seeing increasingly widespread use among students. We also want to challenge the thoughtless use of AI; it is a tool that humans must learn to use effectively, not a machine that provides answers to everything. We are a multidisciplinary team that aims to analyze students’ use of AI and provide an innovative solution to promote a more engaging way of studying. Through our AI use case, we aim to encourage travel and transform the administrative processes and research related to exchange programs into a conversation with a chatbot (or other possible systems) that mobility centers can access, enabling these centers to also develop their own methods for collecting data and communicating.

Many students wish to go on an international exchange through programs such as Erasmus, yet only a minority actually take the leap. Our team, made up of students who have gone through this process ourselves, is convinced that the main barrier is not a lack of motivation, but administrative complexity: scattered documents, untranslated foreign university websites, tight deadlines, and financial aid that far too few students know about. Our solution is an AI assistant dedicated to international mobility, accessible to both students and university mobility services. For students, the assistant would act as a personalized guide throughout the entire journey: finding partner universities, understanding eligibility criteria, tracking application deadlines, identifying equivalent courses within their curriculum, and navigating visa and housing procedures. It would centralize official information from the home university, partner institutions, and relevant administrative bodies, and present it in a clear, accessible, and multilingual format. For mobility services, the assistant would serve as a dynamic communication tool: updating information in one place, sending automated reminders to students at key stages, and collecting structured data on student needs and challenges. Why this solution is responsible and realistic: the tool does not replace human advisors, it reduces the information-seeking burden so that both students and staff can focus on what truly matters. By removing overly constraining administrative barriers, our solution enables more students to follow through with their exchange plans, while addressing an equity issue, so that those with the tightest budgets are no longer the first to give up due to a lack of information about available financial support. The proposed implementation is progressive: initially a chatbot connected to existing university information systems, then an extension integrated into the MoveOn platform (the French university mobility registration platform) for a more personalized accompaniment. Ultimately, the use of AI here is not about automating the work of the mobility office, it is about making a transformative academic experience accessible to every student, regardless of their background or resources.