Designing Web-Based Adaptive Support for Debate
with Dialogue Modelling
John Cook
Learning Technology Research Institute
www.unl.ac.uk/ltri/
Structure of talk
Introduction
Approach to designing computer-based pedagogical
agents
Dialogue analysis and modelling
Future work
e
internet
intranet
browser
Introduction
Agent is needed when students are preparing to
engage in an online debate
Individual contributions online debate worth 40%
Defending open-ended evaluation criteria using
Collabra
Addressing implementation challenges in real-world
situations
Approach to designing computer-based pedagogical
agents Limitations in the available methods for building models of open-
ended debates, our approach:
Theoretical framework
Analysis techniques of interaction data
Computational model, i.e. system design.
Computer implementation, e.g. MetaMuse
Dialogue analysis and modelling
Analysing the interaction data for occurrences of
categories of goals drawn from our theoretical
framework
Patterns of goals will be modelled as state transition
networks
2 3 4 6TA: motivation encouragement
8
TA: Task
7
LA: critical clarification
TA: critical probing TA: Task
TA: critical give reasons
TA: motivation encouragement
5
TA: motivation encouragement
TA: motivation encouragement LA: critical
clarification
TA: Task
TA: critical give reasons
Dialogues from 1999 put online as a vicarious
learning resource for 2000 students
Used WebCT this year
Approximately 1500 postings in 10 day debate
4 tutors and over 100 students
Future work
Analyse 2000 debate to build debating skills agent
Simulate some of the debates to further assist
vicarious learning
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