Research Article
Evaluating an Intelligent Q&A System for Mobile Cultural Learning
@ARTICLE{10.4108/fiee.1.2.e3, author={Ioannis Doumanis and Serengul Smith}, title={Evaluating an Intelligent Q\&A System for Mobile Cultural Learning}, journal={EAI Endorsed Transactions on Future Intelligent Educational Environments}, volume={1}, number={2}, publisher={ICST}, journal_a={FIEE}, year={2015}, month={6}, keywords={assisted learning, intelligent interaction, pervasive \& ubiquitous education, technology supported education, cultural information}, doi={10.4108/fiee.1.2.e3} }- Ioannis Doumanis
Serengul Smith
Year: 2015
Evaluating an Intelligent Q&A System for Mobile Cultural Learning
FIEE
ICST
DOI: 10.4108/fiee.1.2.e3
Abstract
The paper presents a user study designed to evaluate the impact of an intelligent Question and Answering (Q&A) system for mobile cultural learning on the user’s subjective impressions and retention performance. We have chosen a recent pedagogical framework for mobile learning as a theoretical foundation for this work. The framework postulates four types of mobile learning from which we have chosen to implement the second one (i.e., High Transactional Distance and Individualised Mobile Learning (HI))[13]. In particular, our Q&A system enables individual learners to interact with unknown cultural content under simulated mobile conditions in a well-organised and structured manner using natural language. To investigate the impact of the Q&A system on the participants’ retention of cultural content, we compared two variations of the Q&A system in the lab under simulated mobile conditions. The systems differed both in terms of the approach to processing natural language (i.e., scripts vs. linguistic parsing) and style of a Q&A session (free vs. constrained). Below, we present the results of the study and a series of design recommendations that should aid in the development of more robust Q&A models for mobile cultural systems.
Copyright © 2015 I. Doumanis and S. Smith, licensed to ICST. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/), which permits unlimited use, distribution and reproduction in any medium so long as the original work is properly cited.
