Designing Web-Based Adaptive Support for Debate with Dialogue Modelling John Cook Learning Technology Research Institute

Structure of talk c Introduction c Approach to designing computer-based pedagogical agents c Dialogue analysis and modelling c Future work

Introduction c Agent is needed when students are preparing to engage in an online debate c Individual contributions online debate worth 40% c Defending open-ended evaluation criteria using Collabra c Addressing implementation challenges in real-world situations

Approach to designing computer-based pedagogical agents c Limitations in the available methods for building models of open-ended debates, our approach: Theoretical framework Analysis techniques of interaction data Computational model, i.e. system design. Computer implementation, e.g. MetaMuse

Dialogue analysis and modelling c Analysing the interaction data for occurrences of categories of goals drawn from our theoretical framework c Patterns of goals will be modelled as state transition networks

c Dialogues from 1999 put online as a vicarious learning resource for 2000 students c Used WebCT this year c Approximately 1500 postings in 10 day debate c 4 tutors and over 100 students

Future work c Analyse 2000 debate to build debating skills agent c Simulate some of the debates to further assist vicarious learning