Evaluating Dialogue Schemata With the Wizard of Oz Computer-Assisted Algebra Tutor

The Wooz tutor of the North Carolina A&T algebra tutorial dialogue project is a computer program that mediates keyboard-to-keyboard tutoring of algebra problems, with the feature that it can suggest to the tutor canned structures of tutoring goals and canned sentences to insert into the tutoring dialogue. It is designed to facilitate and record a style of tutoring where the tutor and student collaboratively construct an answer in the form of an equation, a style often attested in natural tutoring of algebra. The algebra tutoring dialogue project collects and analyzes these dialogues with the aim of describing tutoring strategies and language with enough rigor that they may be evaluated and incorporated in machine tutoring. By plugging our analyzed dialogues into the computer-suggested tutoring component of the Wooz tutor we can evaluate the fitness of our dialogue analysis

Automatic Question Generation for Literature Review Writing Support

Abstract. This paper presents a novel Automatic Question Generation (AQG) approach that generates trigger questions as a form of support for students ’ learning through writing. The approach first automatically extracts citations from students ’ compositions together with key content elements. Next, the citations are classified using a rule-based approach and questions are generated based on a set of templates and the content elements. A pilot study using the Bystander Turing Test investigated dif-ferences in writers ’ perception between questions generated by our AQG system and humans (Human Tutor, Lecturer, or Generic Question). It is found that the human evaluators have moderate difficulties distinguish-ing questions generated by the proposed system from those produced by human (F-score=0.43). Moreover, further results show that our system significantly outscores Generic Question on overall quality measures

RMT: A dialog-based research methods tutor with or without a head

Abstract. RMT (Research Methods Tutor) is a dialog-based tutoring system that has a dual role. Its modular architecture enables the interchange and evaluation of different tools and techniques for improving tutoring. In addition to its research goals, the system is intended to be integrated as a regular component of a term-long Research Methods in Psychology course. Despite the significant technical challenges, this may help reduce our knowledge gap about how such systems can help students with long-term use. In this paper, we describe the RMT architecture and give the results of an initial experiment that compared RMT’s animated agent “talking head ” with a text-only version of the system.

Bringing Chatbots into Education: Towards Natural Language Negotiation of Open Learner Models

Abstract. There is an extensive body of work on Intelligent Tutoring Systems: computer environments for education, teaching and training that adapt to the needs of the individual learner. Work on personalisation and adaptivity has included research into allowing the student user to enhance the system’s adaptivity by improving the accuracy of the underlying learner model. Open Learner Modelling, where the system’s model of the user’s knowledge is revealed to the user, has been proposed to support student reflection on their learning. Increased accuracy of the learner model can be obtained by the student and system jointly negotiating the learner model. We present the initial investigations into a system to allow people to negotiate the model of their understanding of a topic in natural language. This paper discusses the development and capabilities of both conversational agents (or chatbots) and Intelligent Tutoring Systems, in particular Open Learner Modelling. We describe a Wizard-of-Oz experiment to investigate the feasibility of using a chatbot to support negotiation, and conclude that a fusion of the two fields can lead to developing negotiation techniques for chatbots and the enhancement of the Open Learner Model. This technology, if successful, could have widespread application in schools, universities and other training scenarios.