An Introduction to TuTalk: Developing Dialogue Agents for Learning Applications

1. An Introduction to TuTalk: Developing Dialogue Agents for Learning Applications Pamela Jordan University of Pittsburgh Learning Research and Development Center

2. Dialogues in Learning Applications • Language practice • Peer collaborations • Short answer tutorial dialogue • AutoTutor • Circsim-Tutor • TuTalk

3. AutoTutor - Physics

4. Circsim-Tutor

5. Cordillera (built using TuTalk)

6. ProPL (built using TuTalk)

7. What is TuTalk? Dialogue system construction tools for learning applications • Authoring tools for creating, testing and maintaining an artificial dialogue partner/agent • Dialogue system & server that: • Conducts dialogues with multiple students • Provides communication protocol for integrating with interfaces and applications (Several how-to examples provided) • Provides experiment management tools

8. As a runner pushes a ball away, what horizontal forces act on it? Good! <subdialog> <subdialog > After the push ends, what forces….? Finite state dialogue management {gravitational, *} <anything else> {runner’s}

9. T: Let’s consider the forces acting on objects after they have been thrown. As a runner pushes a ball away, what horizontal forces are acting on it while she is pushing it? S: Gravity? T: In what direction does gravity act? S: downward T: Yes. So is a downward force a horizontal or vertical force? S: It is vertical T: Right. I asked for the horizontal forces instead and the only one is from the runner. After the push ends, what horizontal forces are acting on the ball? Example dialogue Subdialogue

10. TuTalk Dialogue System Usage History

11. What do you have to do to create a TuTalk dialogue agent? • Write domain content in form of natural language dialogue turns (e.g. elicit or tell) • Write an ideal dialogue on a topic • Write expected short answer student responses (correct, not correct) • Write subdialogues for expected student responses that are: • Partially correct/incomplete • Partially incorrect • Overly vague • Overly specific • Correct but premature

12. Authoring, Previewing and Testing Demo

13. Authoring, Previewing and Testing Demo

14. When are short answer dialogues appropriate/inappropriate? • Appropriate for: • practicing some dialogue skills • conceptual discussions • scaffolding problem solving • identifying & addressing gaps in student understanding only as needed (hints, examples) • Not appropriate for: • assessing deep understanding • addressing grammar problems in language • content delivery – printed text is more efficient • student-only initiative (use CTAT instead)

15. Past Summer School TuTalk projects Language tutoring: • Coaching military trainees to follow one required communications protocol • Giving ESL learners dialogue practice • Coaching student is proper use of two Chinese lexical items that depend on context

16. PSLC Summer School 2007 Using TuTalk to build a tutor for Chinese pronunciation Wenyan Zhou, Vanderbilt University Tiffany Taylor, George Mason University

17. Implementation Choosing the wrong pinyin provides feedback and choosing the “right” pinyin but the wrong tone leads to remediation

18. Past Summer School TuTalk projects Conceptual tutoring: • Coaching elementary school students in qualitative reasoning skills • Coaching students on loop constructs in programming • Coaching students in the solution of monomials • Coaching students on Pythagorean Theorem

19. CT Percent Tutor + Metacognitive TuTalk Prompts • Primary school aged students • Learning Objectives • Learning fractions, percentages, and ratios • Translating word problem into an equation • ITS Roles • CT • Model Tracing • Facilitates problem steps • Detect a suboptimal & two buggy paths • TuTalk • Metacognitive prompts • Encourages self-monitoring & goal settings • Facilitates analogous solution strategies Dr. Baba Kofi Weusijanae-mail: babaw@u.washington.edu Yvette Aquie-mail: yvette.aqui@unlv.edu

20. Demo – CTAT Incorrect Path 1:Percent Conversion Incorrect 2

21. Demo – TuTalk Script 1 , Example 1

22. Tuesday TuTalk Track • Track Lecture:Basics of Authoring TuTalk Dialogue Agents • Review and expand on basic authoring with GUI • Introduce alternative scripting language for authoring • Hands-on:Create a simple TuTalk Dialogue Agent • Do section 3.3 of TuTalk Authoring Interface User’s Guide (can do sections 3.1 and 3.2 first if you prefer) • Project:Locate relevant dialogues or collect small sample of dialogues (available corpora http://andes3.lrdc.pitt.edu/TuTalk/corpora/) • Track Lecture:The Methodology of Authoring Dialogues • Dialogue authoring methodologies   • Advice/findings on effective learning dialogues • Project:Identify problem solving goals to cover in dialogue • Project: Begin dialogue authoring (mainlines of reasoning w/ correct and default follow-up) • Group Lectures: Think alouds & difficulty factors assessment, Educational Data Mining

23. Wednesday TuTalk Track • Track Lecture: Advanced TuTalk Dialogue Agents • Discuss TuTalk server and its support tools • Explore additional authoring features (e.g. looping, optional steps) • Project: Test and refine dialogue goals & implemented dialogues • Project: Add more expected student responses & follow-ups • Project:Test and refine additions • Project:Create alternative ways of achieving dialogue goals & subgoals, e.g. • Version of dialogue for advanced student (e.g. agent does or summarizes easy steps and scaffolds harder steps, ask for justifications) • Version for less advanced student (e.g. agent scaffolds easy steps and models the harder steps, agent explains justifications for steps) • Group Lectures: Issues in transfer & learning, Cognitive principles in tutor design • Group Demos (in parallel): ML for building a cognitive tutor, ESL demo

24. Thursday TuTalk Track • Project:Test latest dialogues and refine • Project:Finalize dialogue agent • Final testing • Set up an interface to demo agent for poster session • Integrate with other tools that are triggers for dialogue goals • Project:Prepare posters, presentations • Lecture: Socio-cultural perspectives on learning

25. TuTalk Development Team • Authoring tools: • Carolyn Rosé • Yue Cui (Jenny) • Rohit Kumar • Dialogue system & server: • Pam Jordan • Brian Hall (Moses) • Michael Ringenberg

26. TuTalk Summer School Team • Pam Jordan (dialogue system behavior, dialogue management module) • Moses Hall (interface, integration, implementation of system modules) • Min Chi (experienced dialogue author)

27. More info & software download: http://andes2.lrdc.pitt.edu/TuTalk pjordan@pitt.edu mosesh@pitt.edu

28. Demo snapshots

29. Authoring a dialogue with subdialogues

30. Authoring a subdialogue

31. Extending concept definitions

32. Previewing authored dialogues

33. Testing with dialogue agent server