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ISDS Students Come Up With Solutions Benefitting Credit Union Services

By Keith Morelli

Kaushik Dutta

TAMPA (October 27, 2017) -- Students with the Muma College of Business Information Systems and Decision Sciences department recently completed a project in which they developed a system to introduce voice command interfaces with credit-union records systems.

The project involved the Payment Systems for Credit Unions and the USF Practice Center. Two graduate students, chosen from 100 applicants, were selected to participate in the summer, semester-long program that created "an integrated Internet of Things learning experience."

"PSCU provided our students with an amazing opportunity to further their experiences in the classroom and apply their knowledge to a functioning organization's mission," said Kaushik Dutta, associate professor who teaches data analytics. "Our students will no doubt take their learnings from this experience with them during the rest of their college careers and beyond."

The 12-week program was funded through a grant provided by PSCU and allowed the students to explore financial services-use cases for Internet of Things devices including Amazon Echo and Google Home.

"In today's world, working with new technology and identifying business-use cases is an essential skill that techno-business students need to learn," Dutta said. "Our objective in the project was twofold: One, to give the students experiential learning on this vital skill and two, to develop a prototype that PSCU can use for further application of Internet of Things technology in PSCU business."

The project proved to be a success, giving students a chance to work with the latest technology and exercise their creativity to solve real-world problems.

"The goal was to develop an Internet of Things interface with Amazon Echo and Google Home for credit-union systems," Dutta said. "The prototype developed in the project enabled the workflow to answer voice commands to Amazon Echo and Google Home, fetch information from the credit-union database and deliver the info sought using the voice of these respective devices."

PSCU, in a statement, said it plans to use the research conducted by the students.

"We saw this as a unique opportunity for PSCU to collaborate and innovate using new technology and we chose USF given its history of partnering with other financial service leaders in the Tampa Bay area," said Priya Dozier, vice president of digital solutions and innovation at PSCU. "We were impressed with the knowledge and talent of the students and look forward to building on the program's findings for our credit unions."