Our Approach to Socially Intelligent Tutor

2. Our Approach to Socially Intelligent Tutor Enhancing Learning with Off-Task Social Dialogues

3. Learning (1) – Course notes Enhancing Learning with Off-Task Social Dialogues

4. Learning (2) – Problem solving Enhancing Learning with Off-Task Social Dialogues

5. Tasks for assessment and practice Expert’s idea Ability estimate Task scheme Adaptive selection Estimation Generator Answer category Task instance Judge Student Answer Enhancing Learning with Off-Task Social Dialogues

6. Task scheme specification • Parameters, constraints, tree of subtasks and answers • Psychometric IRT parameters, usage indicators Solution tree Task’s scheme tree correct A - C incorrect A A - B B C B - C Task scheme: Enhancing Learning with Off-Task Social Dialogues

7. Task instance Instance generation Parameters’ specification Pruned backtracking Instantiated parameters Scheme tree Instance tree Combine Enhancing Learning with Off-Task Social Dialogues

8. Updating user’s profile • Off-task dialogues • Qs/As scripted to perform actions • Extracting user’s preferences & behaviors • Extracting event attributes • Recommending events to attend • Negotiating events with others • Relationship maintenance Enhancing Learning with Off-Task Social Dialogues

9. Extracting interests Tutor: Hello Kate, how are you?I'm here to make you feel comfortable, so that you learn much... :-) Student greeting Tutor: ok, write me about yourself, what you like, and all... I can thenprepare exercises that you will like ... ;) Extract features (e.g. to draw, watch TV, friends) Tutor: tell me more, pls. < 40 chars ≥40 chars Tutor: interesting, I for example like to readbooks,swim, play volleyball and soccer Student ack / Turn initiative Tutor: now, look around and solve exercises,ok?see you around! Enhancing Learning with Off-Task Social Dialogues

10. Sample conversation Enhancing Learning with Off-Task Social Dialogues

11. Real-life adaptation of tasks Instance generation, guided by student’s hobbies Parameters’ specification Semantic similarity with student’sfavorite concepts Pruned backtracking Instantiated parameters Scheme tree Instance tree Combine Enhancing Learning with Off-Task Social Dialogues

12. Evaluation study • Middle school mathematics • 18 parametric algebra tasks • Tutoring friend • Extract hobbies • Students did participate in a pilot previously • Familiar with the environment Enhancing Learning with Off-Task Social Dialogues

13. Is it better than paper&pencil? • 32 students • Control group = traditional classroom • Experimental group = tutor • Learning gain: 1.2% vs 10.3% Enhancing Learning with Off-Task Social Dialogues

14. Are they willing to do it? • 16 students • Detect student interests in the initial welcome dialogue: to draw, sleep, watch TV, go out, go out with dog • Mean word count 11.6 (st.dev 8.7) • Mean feature count 1.56 (st.dev 1.7) • 44% IGNORED the tutor • Others: mfc2.78 (st.dev 1.39) Enhancing Learning with Off-Task Social Dialogues

15. Motivating students? • Those that did engage with the tutor • Less problems attempted, higher success rate. Enhancing Learning with Off-Task Social Dialogues

16. Motivating students? (contd.) • Is the tutoring friend any good? • We don’t know. • Learning gain: 3.7% vs. 12.3% • We can filter students that areengaged, and do well.  Enhancing Learning with Off-Task Social Dialogues

17. Summing up • Those who engage in the social off-task dialog with the tutor solve problems better:) • Tutors that are “friends” with students can produce higher learning gains. • Socially intelligent tutor – tutoring friend: • gets to know you better, • guides you to what you need. Enhancing Learning with Off-Task Social Dialogues