Share Paper: Assessing the impact of intelligent interventions by conversational agents: Implications for pedagogical agent design

  1. Mike Procter, Athabasca Univerisity, Canada
  2. Bob Heller, Athabasca Univerisity, Canada
  3. Oscar Lin, Athabasca Univerisity, Canada
Wednesday, October 18 10:15-10:35 AM Pavillion D

Abstract: Researchers have acknowledged the important role of conversational agents in education but there has been very little research on the types of user conversations and whether different types of users might require different types of conversational strategies to remain engaged throughout the interaction. In this paper, previous conversations with a conversational agent were examined in order to identify the different types of user styles and develop a machine learning algorithm that could perform the classification with new users. Moreover, an intervention designed to improve overall engagement was implemented for each classification and assessed with a new group of users (N=56). ...