Overview:

Iowa's Extension and Outreach program provides resources for communities, businesses, and nonprofits via six help and support hotlines. The use of hotlines has increased dramatically with the onset of COVID-19. Our team partnered with hotline managers to understand the system architecture, data structure and quality, and past uses of the data generated by the hotlines. Using this information, we piloted interactive dashboards on call topics, outcomes, and emotional content (via sentiment scoring of generated transcripts) to support improved customer service, monitor success, and auto-generate reports so hotline workers can spend more time helping citizens and less time filling out paperwork.

Teaser Video:

Research Project Webpage:

Click here for more details about the project including findings, data, and methods.

Fellows:

Deepak George Thomas

Deepak George Thomas

Graduate Student, Computer Science, Iowa State University
 
 
 
 

Interns:

Kok Kent Chong

Kok Kent Chong

Undergraduate Student, Finance & Supply Chain Management, Iowa State University
 
 
 
 

Andrew Maloney

Andrew Maloney

Recent Undergraduate/Incoming Master’s Student, Mathematics, Iowa State University
 
 
 
 

Xinyi Zhu

Xinyi Zhu

Undergraduate Student, Statistics & Data Science, Iowa State University
 
 
 
 

Mentors:

Adisak Sukul

Associate Teaching Professor in the Department of Computer Science, Iowa State University

Shawn F. Dorius

Associate Professor of Sociology, Iowa State University

Stakeholders:

Iowa's Cooperative Extension and Outreach Hotline Program

Info

Program Support:

Madeline Johnson

Graduate Student, Statistics, Iowa State University