Submitted by wjarek on 28 February, 2009 - 00:12.
The Center for Speech and Language Processing would like to invite you to a talk by
Prof. Ron Cole (Boulder Language Technologies)
Time: 04 March 2009, 10:00
Place: Room 601A, Collegium Novum
Title: Spoken Dialogs with My Science Tutor
Abstract
Since July 2007, researchers at Boulder Language Technologies, in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Colorado, the University of Pittsburgh and the Lawrence Hall of Science at Berkeley have been developing an intelligent tutoring system called My Science Tutor. MyST is designed to improve science learning and achievement by third, fourth and fifth grade students who use an inquiry-based science program called FOSS, which teaches science through hands-on classroom science investigations conducted by small groups of students. The system is designed to engage students in natural spoken dialogs with a lifelike computer character (My Science Tutor) after students have conducted one or two classroom science investigations. By processing students’ responses to mostly open-ended questions produced by the tutor (e.g., “What’s that all about?”, “Tell me more about that.”) the system is able to assess what concepts students do and don’t know and ask follow-up questions designed to stimulate thinking and reasoning and lead to more accurate explanations. If the dialog stalls, and students clearly need some coaching, the system will present illustrations, narrated animations or interactive experiments that provide the foundation for subsequent conversation.
At this point in time, a fully automatic system has been developed for tutoring students in magnetism and electricity. This system is being tested with students in “Wizard of Oz” mode, in which the student interacts with the My Science Tutor program while a human tutor in a remote location monitors the dialog between the student and the virtual tutor. The human tutor, or Wizard, decides whether to accept the system response (e.g., ask a question, present an animation) or override the behavior the system is about to produce. For example, the human tutor may decide to ask a different question than the one about to be produced by the virtual tutor or to present an animation or have the student interact with a simulation similar to the classroom science investigation.
If the Demo Gods cooperate, the system will be demonstrated, along with preliminary results of students’ opinions about the system and learning gains for students who used the system compared to students in the same classrooms who did not use the system.
Submitted by J Weckwerth
