Search Results (4)

During the past decade, chatbots have been integrated into commercial platforms to facilitate second language acquisition (SLA) by providing opportunities for interactive conversations. However, SLA learner progress is limited by chatbots that lack the contextualization typically added by instructors to college and university courses. The present study focuses on a collaborative Digital Learning Incubator (DLI) project dedicated to creating and testing a chatbot with a physical form, or avatar chatbot, called Slabot (Second Language Acquisition Bot), in two upper-level university courses at the University of Tennessee, asynchronous online Spanish 331 (Introduction to Hispanic Culture), and in-person Spanish 434 (Hispanic Culture Through Film). Students in these two courses believe that their oral skills would benefit from more opportunities to speak in Spanish. To provide the students with more practice and instructors with a tool for assessing Spanish oral skills in online and in-person courses, the DLI project objective was to advance current avatar chatbot platforms by enabling Slabot to elicit student responses appropriate for evaluation according to the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) standards. An initial test of Slabot was conducted, and the results demonstrated the potential for Slabot to achieve the project objective. Full article

Student life causes many sources of stress due to the requirements of managing schoolwork, family, friends, health and wellbeing, and future career planning. Some students are overwhelmed and lack resilience to overcome stress, especially if they are inexperienced in managing setbacks, fail to achieve expectations, or lack skills to independently manage social skills, recreation, and study time. The long-term accumulation of stress has a negative impact on students’ physical and mental health, and may lead to a range of symptoms such as depression, anxiety, headache, insomnia, and eating disorders. Although most universities provide psychological counseling services, there is often a shortage of professional psychologists, which leads to students suffering from stress for longer than necessary without immediate assistance. The build-up of stress can lead to tragic consequences including abnormal reasoning, anti-social behavior, and suicide. There should never be a need for a student to wait more than a month to make an appointment for counseling services and every request for help should be immediately addressed and assessed. In this research, we designed a unique test platform for an immersive virtual reality group chatbot counseling system so students can receive psychological help and stress management counseling anytime and anywhere. First, the research used questionnaires to measure the stress levels and identifies how stress affects their lives. An immersive virtual reality chatbot was developed using professional psychological counseling knowledge that can provide answers during individual or group counseling sessions. Students can log in to the platform as avatars and ask the chatbot questions or interact with other students on the platform. This research provides college students with a new technology-based counseling environment designed to help relieve stress and learn new ways to improve student life quality from others. The platform provides a test base for future clinical trials to evaluate and improve the automated virtual reality chatbot counseling system. Full article

Dialogue systems, also known as conversational agents, are computing systems that use algorithms for speech and language processing to engage in conversation with humans or other conversation-capable systems. A chatbot is a conversational agent that has, as its primary goal, to maximize the length of the conversation without any specific targeted task. When a chatbot is embellished with an artistic approach that is meant to evoke an emotional response, then it is called a virtual being. On the other hand, conversational agents that interact with the physical world require the use of specialized hardware to sense and process captured information. In this article we describe EdgeAvatar, a system based on Edge Computing principles for the creation of virtual beings. The objective of the EdgeAvatar system is to provide a streamlined and modular framework for virtual being applications that are to be deployed in public settings. We also present two implementations that use EdgeAvatar and are inspired by historical figures to interact with visitors of the Venice Biennale 2019. EdgeAvatar can adapt to fit different approaches for AI powered conversations. Full article

Distributed intelligent systems (DIS) appear where natural intelligence agents (humans) and artificial intelligence agents (algorithms) interact, exchanging data and decisions and learning how to evolve toward a better quality of solutions. The networked dynamics of distributed natural and artificial intelligence agents leads to emerging complexity different from the ones observed before. In this study, we review and systematize different approaches in the distributed intelligence field, including the quantum domain. A definition and mathematical model of DIS (as a new class of systems) and its components, including a general model of DIS dynamics, are introduced. In particular, the suggested new model of DIS contains both natural (humans) and artificial (computer programs, chatbots, etc.) intelligence agents, which take into account their interactions and communications. We present the case study of domain-oriented DIS based on different agents’ classes and show that DIS dynamics shows complexity effects observed in other well-studied complex systems. We examine our model by means of the platform of personal self-adaptive educational assistants (avatars), especially designed in our University. Avatars interact with each other and with their owners. Our experiment allows finding an answer to the vital question: How quickly will DIS adapt to owners’ preferences so that they are satisfied? We introduce and examine in detail learning time as a function of network topology. We have shown that DIS has an intrinsic source of complexity that needs to be addressed while developing predictable and trustworthy systems of natural and artificial intelligence agents. Remarkably, our research and findings promoted the improvement of the educational process at our university in the presence of COVID-19 pandemic conditions. Full article