Papers about Knowledge

The chapter discusses some design challenges encountered when developing a conversational pedagogical agent. By tracing the historical roots of pedagogical agents in Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS), we discern central developments of creating an agent that is both knowledgeable and fosters a social relationship with the learner. Some main challenges when attempting to develop a pedagogical agent of this kind regard: i) learners’ expectations on the agent’s knowledge profile and social profile, ii) dealing with learners’... Read more

We describe our work-in-progress of developing an educational game in mathematics for 12-14 year olds, by adding social and conversational abilities to an existing “teachable agent” (TA) in the game. The purpose of this extension is to affect cognitive, emotional and social constructs known to promote learning, such as self-efficacy and engagement, as well as enhancing students’ experiences of interacting with the agent over an extended period of time. Drawing from the EnALI framework, which... Read more

Paper "The Persona Zero-Effect: Evaluating virtual character benefits on a learning task with repeated interactions" presents embodied agents, that have the potential to become a highly natural human-computer interaction device - they are already is use as tutors, presenters and assistants. However, it remains an open question whether adding an agent to an application has a measurable impact, positive or negative, in terms of motivation and learning performance. Prior studies are very diverse with respect... Read more

Virtual Worlds such as Second Life provide unique opportunities to simulate real life scenarios and immerse the user in an environment that can be tailored to meet specific educational requirements. In these Immersive Learning Environments, students and faculty can interact from anywhere in the real world. From a general education perspective, they allow for virtual classrooms, virtual libraries, interactive role-playing, remote seminars, etc. From a medical education and science perspective, Immersive Learning Environments such as... Read more

A chatbot is a program capable of conversing in natural language. First conceived in 1966 by Joseph Weizenbaum with the creation of ELIZA, chatbots rose to popularity in the 90s – partly because of advances in technology, but also because of the appearance of the Loebner Prize competition. This competition is based on Turing’s imitation game, which is the original ‘Turing Test’. Although it has dominated the chatbot scene in recent years, it has been... Read more

Currently, applications that focus on providing conversations with virtual humans require extensive work to create robust conversational models. We present a new approach called Human-centered Distributed Conversational Modeling. Using this approach, users create conversational models in a distributed manner. To do this, end-users interact with virtual humans to provide new stimuli (questions and statements), and domain-specific experts (e.g. medical/psychology educators) provide new virtual human responses. Using this process, users become the primary developers of conversational... Read more

Believable spatial behaviour is important for intelligent virtual agents acting in human-like environments, such as buildings or cities. Existing models of spatial cognition and memory for these agents are predominantly aimed at issues of navigation and learning of topology of the environment. The issue of representing information about possible objects' locations in a familiar environment, information that can evolve over long periods, has not been sufficiently studied. Here, we present a novel representation for "what-where"... Read more

AI Chat Bots and Digital Assistants are designed to enhance online experiences and to support branding and transaction requirements. The Report defines a problem context related to interactive character interfaces and presents data analyses using activity maps, talk-throughs, personas, and scenarios. Insights based on subject domain research, interviews, electronic feedback, and observed design practices enabled the pairing of a persona with a scenario in order to identify user problems and to set the requirements for a client-centered... Read more

An experimental approach was used to compare two types of web interfaces (text-based vs. conversation-based) to content on the life and theories of Jean Piaget. The content in each interface was identical with the exception of third- vs. first-person references. Fifty-nine students in psychology first completed a pretest of Piagetian knowledge and then were randomly assigned to one of the two interfaces. After 20 minutes of review/conversation, students completed a 35-item exam designed to measure... Read more

In this paper, we present some initial thoughts on the occurrence of verbal abuse in human-chatterbot interaction within the framework of social-cognition. This thinking is an important step towards the understanding of virtual relationships and the design of socially adept technology. Read more