Dialogue Management and Language Generation for a Robust Conversational Virtual Coach: Validation and User Study

Designing human–machine interactive systems requires cooperation between different disciplines is required. In this work, we present a Dialogue Manager and a Language Generator that are the core modules of a Voice-based Spoken Dialogue System (SDS) capable of carrying out challenging, long and complex coaching conversations. We also develop an efficient integration procedure of the whole system that will act as an intelligent and robust Virtual Coach. The coaching task significantly differs from the classical applications of SDSs, resulting in a much higher degree of complexity and difficulty. The Virtual Coach has been successfully tested and validated in a user study with independent elderly, in three different countries with three different languages and cultures: Spain, France and Norway.The research presented in this paper has been conducted as part of the project EMPATHIC that has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant No. 769872. Additionally, this work has been partially funded by projects BEWORD and AMIC-PC of the Minister of Science of Technology, under Grant Nos. PID2021-126061OB-C42 and PDC2021-120846-C43, respectively. Vázquez and López Zorrilla received a PhD scholarship from the Basque Government, with Grant Nos. PRE 2020 1 0274 and PRE 2017 1 0357, respectively

Academic Thriving:Optimising Student Development with Evidence-Based Higher Education

Academic thriving stands for a combination of academic outcomes as well as success in other relevant domains, such as well-being or finding the right job. What causes students to thrive academically? The studies in this dissertation contributed to this question with the use of experimental, interdisciplinary and longitudinal studies, and a critical theoretical examination of the arguments against evidence-based education. A large-scale field experiment showed that first-year students who reflected on their desired future, prioritized goals, and wrote detailed plans on how to reach these goals, performed significantly better (in study credits and retention) than students who made a control assignment. This low-cost and scalable goal-setting assignment was made at the start of college and only took the students two hours to complete. Personalized follow-up feedback delivered by an AI-enhanced chatbot could further improve benefits to study outcomes as well as well-being. The final study in this dissertation tracked the effects of different types of work on the study progress of teacher education students over a four-year span. This longitudinal study showed that student who had a paid job in education gained more study credits than students with other types of work or without a job. Additionally it showed that working 8 hours per week relates with the most study progress in the first and third semester of college

Implementación de un chatbot y su influencia en el proceso de atención a las unidades descentralizadas de la SUTRAN 2016

RESUMEN La presente investigación tiene como Problema general ¿Cuál es la influencia de la implementación de un chatbot en el proceso de atención a las unidades descentralizadas de la SUTRAN, 2016? El objetivo general es determinar la influencia de la implementación de un chatbot en el proceso de atención a las unidades descentralizadas de la SUTRAN, 2016. El estudio fue de tipo Experimental y el diseño Cuasi - Experimental, La población en estudio estuvo conformada por todos los procesos de atención a las unidades descentralizadas de la Superintendencia de Transporte Terrestre de Personas, Carga y Mercancía, 2016 y el muestreo es no probabilístico por conveniencia de tamaño igual a 55, los datos se obtuvieron a través de la realización de un cuestionario a partir de una escala tipo Likert. Se tabularon y se procesaron los datos en el paquete estadístico SPSS Versión 24.0. Los resultados indican una influencia positiva de la implementación de un chatbot en el proceso de atención a las unidades descentralizadas de la SUTRAN, 2016. (sig. bilateral = 0.018 < 0.05; Rho = 0.317*). PALABRAS CLAVE: chatbot, IA, PLN, ML, proceso.ABSTRACT The current research has a general problem. What is the influence of the implementation of a chatbot in the process of attention to the decentralized units of SUTRAN 2016? The general objective is to determine the influence of the implementation of a chatbot in the process of attention to the decentralized units of the SUTRAN 2016. The study was of an Experimental type and a quasi - Experimental design, the population in study was composed of all the processes of attention to decentralized units of the Superintendency of road transport of people, goods and cargo 2016 and the sampling is not probabilistic for convenience of a size equal to 55, the data was obtained through the completion of a questionnaire from a Likert type scale, the data was tabulated and processed in the statistical package SPSS Version 24.0. The results indicate a positive influence of the implementation of a chatbot in the process of attention to the decentralized units of SUTRAN 2016. (sig. bilateral = 0.018 < 0.05; Rho = 0.317*). KEYWORDS: chatbot, AI, NLP, ML, process