Our friendly chat robot Ronny Watson will try to guide you to the best page to find an answer to your question. Hence, it should be considered as a very advanced and interactive table of contents (and it is far from making you unemployed).
We launched the first version of our chat robot on 31st of October 2017. The intention was to see if we could learn this robot to automatically answer the most common questions posed. However, it turned out that this first robot had some serious learning difficulties. Hence, on 11th of November 2017 we switched to another robot powered by IBM Watson. We believe this chat robot has a greater learning potential.
Initially we put the new robot in an introductory course of basic concepts in research methodology. It successfully completed part 1 of its training on 10th of April 2018 so we made the robot visible on all pages. It successfully completed part 2 of the training on 1st of May 2018. Part 3 of the training was undertaken in August and first part of September 2019. The robot is continuously learning and it may take time before this functionality is good. Please chat with Ronny Watson so he gets a chance to improve but please be patient with him.
The chat robot presents as a small chat icon in the bottom left corner. A chat window opens up when you click on the icon. You can write any question related to research methodology. Please write very short questions. Long questions are likely to make the chat robot more or less confused. Try to start a question with something like “Please tell me about…” or “What is…”.
The chat window can be minimised by clicking on the down arrow in the upper right corner of the chat window. It will stay as an icon in the bottom left corner until you click on it again.
We will look at past chats to see where the robot goes wrong and try to improve its knowledge base and behaviour. Hence, the more you use Ronny Watson the more he will improve and get better. These past chats are stored for 30 days and do not contain information that can be linked to you. Hence, we don’t know who asked a question. We will not use the chat information for anything else than providing a better service. We do not collect information for marketing purposes! Read more about the purpose of this site here: About