Chat with Beaverly!

Beaverly enables OSU to reach out to, hear from, and support the entire undergraduate student population, regardless of campus, college, or major.

Beaverly  fulfills two important functions:
1) Conducts regular outreach to students around important topics at key-times of the term. This information enables us to understand both large-scale aggregated trends, and the specific challenges that individual students are facing. It’s like a micro-check in where OSU can act on data in days, rather than the months that often define large-survey work.

2) Provides a 24/7 question-answering capability.  Beaverly’s knowledge base uses information gathered from trusted OSU resources and has been designed to get students a quick, fact-based answer, or a referral to the humans who can help students. Beaverly aims to be accurate and helpful, but it is not designed to walk students through nuanced or complex processes. Humans do that work better.

While Beaverly is smart, it is still a chatbot and does not have the same understanding, judgement, or ability to understand context the way humans do. What this means for students: 

• Beaverly cannot infer meaning, tone, motive or ambiguity in the information that is shared. If it tries, Beaverly may generate inaccurate responses or not provide the best resources.   
• Beaverly is not an official reporting mechanism for the university. To submit official reports to OSU, please visit an offical reporting tool.
• Beaverly is not designed to walk students through complex processes, and it has been designed to try to point students to OSU staff who can help them. 
• Beaverly does not include all information available on OSU website resources or that might be generally available via external online sources. In many places, Beaverly points students to relevant OSU websites where information may change. 
• While every effort is made to ensure that Beaverly’s knowledge base is correct, Beaverly may provide incorrect information if preloaded content is not complete or accurate or if Beaverly attempts to answer a question without clear parameters. 

Many people have been involved in the creation of Beaverly’s knowledge base, but mistakes do happen! If you see something incorrect, please let us know on Beaverly Feedback Form.

No. Beaverly can’t replace campus staff. Beaverly is designed to help students by checking in, answering routine questions, and offering quick referrals. Nuance, complexity, relationship, and care all require interpersonal communication that only staff can provide.

EdSights (the company behind Beaverly) has built multiple safeguards into their chatbot:

• OSU develops the knowledge base that Beaverly pulls from when answering questions
• The chatbot is not designed to speculate beyond its knowledge base
• When the bot’s confidence is low in an answer, the chatbot's answer transparently informs users that the Bot may not know/ be sure and directs them to ask campus staff.

If students share concerning information with Beaverly about dropping out, mental health, violence, or sexual misconduct, Beaverly will inform students of resources (e.g. emergency assistance), remind students that Beaverly is not an official reporting tool and will send an alert to the relevant OSU office. That alert will have the concerning portion of the chat included, which will enable the office to do individualized follow-up during business hours. While this feature is built into Beaverly to better serve students, it is important to note that the Beaverly chatbot is not an official reporting tool. 

OSU staff and designated partners treat Beaverly chat records as the university manages other private education records under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974.  More information about FERPA is available through the Office of the Registrar. OSU staff and designated partners are able to access Beaverly’s chat records, but that access is limited to people who either need that information to help students or who need that information to ensure the functionality of Beaverly.

Staff (both OSU and EdSights) do not review every message sent through Beaverly, and we encourage students to share concerning or important information directly to OSU designated offices that can provide support.

Student privacy is a core priority.   

• EdSights follows FERPA and institutional privacy standards.
• Student data is not sold or used for marketing.
• When you interact with Beaverly, your questions and responses may be used to improve how OSU’s chatbot works and to help OSU better support students. This information is used only to improve services and the performance of this specific chatbot. It is not used to train external tools (such as ChatGPT or other public AI systems) and is not shared or used for commercial purposes.

Oregon State University recognizes that all digital technologies, including AI, require energy to operate, and we take our responsibility to deploy these tools thoughtfully.

Beaverly was intentionally designed to support students while minimizing the environmental impact typically associated with large-scale AI systems. Unlike many widely known generative AI tools, Beaverly primarily draws from a curated knowledge base developed and maintained by OSU professionals rather than generating fully open-ended responses.

This approach significantly reduces the amount of real-time computation required and avoids some of the most energy-intensive aspects of large AI models, such as continuous large-scale content generation and model training.

In addition, Beaverly is purpose-built for student support at OSU. It operates at a smaller scale, does not generate images or other high-compute media, and is designed to connect students efficiently to existing university resources rather than replace human interaction.

At an institutional level, OSU is committed to sustainability and to reducing the environmental impact of our operations, including our use of emerging technologies. This includes ongoing evaluation of digital tools, support for research that improves energy efficiency in computing, and alignment with the university’s broader climate and sustainability goals.

We recognize that the environmental impact of AI is an evolving area of concern and inquiry. OSU remains committed to transparency, responsible use, and continuous improvement as these technologies, and our understanding of their impacts, continue to develop.

Beaverly is available to all undergraduate students. Beaverly will not respond to student texts until the student has been loaded into Beaverly’s student list.

Beaverly is not intended (or available) to replace or limit existing methods of communication available to students, staff, or additional groups. The chatbot is intended to supplement these tools by providing proactive outreach to students and responding to student questions.

To opt out: If you ever want to opt-out, all you have to do is reply “STOP” to a message from Beaverly.

To opt back in: To opt-in, you can send the text “HELLO” to +1 (888) 451-7202

If you have questions about Beaverly, please reach out to [email protected].