Question & answering interface to improve the students’ experience in an e-learning course with a virtual tutor

João Balsa*, Luís Neves, Maria Beatriz Carmo, Ana Paula Cláudio

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

E-learning courses offer, nowadays, opportunities for everyone to study wherever they are. However, asynchronous communication between students and teachers, and the lack of social engagement, leads frequently to a sense of abandonment and, in the limit, to withdrawal, as a consequence. To avoid this phenomenon, we developed an interface prototype with an anthropomorphic 3D virtual tutor in the Moodle’s e-learning platform of Universidade Aberta (https://portal.uab.pt/). This virtual tutor helps students finding information in the page of the course, delivers speech, exhibits facial expressions and is able to answer questions about the course. This paper describes the approach used to implement this Q&A functionality. Having all the course information represented in an ontology, the idea is to transform the original question in a SPARQL query that, when executed on the defined ontology, returns the desired answer.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication3rd EAI International Conference on Technology, Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Education
Subtitle of host publicationTIE 2019: Technology, Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Education
EditorsCristina Sylla, Ido Iurgel
PublisherSpringer Boston
Pages45-54
Number of pages10
ISBN (Print)9783030401795
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2020
Externally publishedYes
Event3rd EAI International Conference on Technology, Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Education, TIE 2019 - Braga, Portugal
Duration: 17 Oct 201918 Oct 2019

Publication series

NameLecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social-Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, LNICST
Volume307 LNICST
ISSN (Print)1867-8211

Conference

Conference3rd EAI International Conference on Technology, Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Education, TIE 2019
Country/TerritoryPortugal
CityBraga
Period17/10/1918/10/19

Keywords

  • E-learning
  • Question & answering
  • Virtual tutor

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