Research Article
Towards the Automatic Generation of Pedagogical Conversational Agents from Lecture Slides
@INPROCEEDINGS{10.1007/978-3-030-82565-2_18, author={Matthias W\o{}lfel}, title={Towards the Automatic Generation of Pedagogical Conversational Agents from Lecture Slides}, proceedings={Multimedia Technology and Enhanced Learning. Third EAI International Conference, ICMTEL 2021, Virtual Event, April 8--9, 2021, Proceedings, Part II}, proceedings_a={ICMTEL PART 2}, year={2021}, month={7}, keywords={Intelligent dialog systems Voice assistants Ontology-based information extraction Natural language processing Learning analytics}, doi={10.1007/978-3-030-82565-2_18} }- Matthias Wölfel
Year: 2021
Towards the Automatic Generation of Pedagogical Conversational Agents from Lecture Slides
ICMTEL PART 2
Springer
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-82565-2_18
Abstract
Although corresponding technological and didactical models have been known for decades, the digitization of teaching has hardly advanced beyond simple non-interactive formats (e.g. downloadable slides are provided within a learning management system). The COVID-19 crisis is changing this situation dramatically, creating a high demand for highly interactive formats and fostering exchange between conversation partners about the course content. Systems are required that are able to communicate with students verbally, to answer their questions, and to check the students’ knowledge. While technological advances have made such systems possible in principle, the game stopper is the large amount of manual work and knowledge that must be put into designing such a system and feeding it the right content.
In this publication, we present a first system to overcome the aforementioned drawback by automatically generating a corresponding dialog system from slide-based presentations, such as PowerPoint, OpenOffice, or Keynote, which can be dynamically adapted to the respective students and their needs. Our first experiments confirm the proof of concept and reveal that such a system can be very handy for both respective groups, learners and lecturers, alike. The limitations of the developed system, however, also reminds us that many challenges need to be addressed to improve the feasibility and quality of such systems, in particular in the understanding of semantic knowledge.
