Related papers: An Analysis of Conversational Volatility During Te…
Social skills training targets behaviors necessary for success in social interactions. However, traditional classroom training for such skills is often insufficient to teach effective communication -- one-to-one interaction in real-world…
Student simulation supports educators to improve teaching by interacting with virtual students. However, most existing approaches ignore the modulation effects of course materials because of two challenges: the lack of datasets with…
Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly explored as substitutes for human participants in cognitive tasks, but their ability to simulate human behavioral variability remains unclear. This study examines whether LLMs can approximate…
Large language models (LLMs) typically generate direct answers, yet they are increasingly used as learning tools. Studying instructors' usage is critical, given their role in teaching and guiding AI adoption in education. We designed and…
In conversation, uptake happens when a speaker builds on the contribution of their interlocutor by, for example, acknowledging, repeating or reformulating what they have said. In education, teachers' uptake of student contributions has been…
Latent actions serve as an intermediate representation that enables consistent modeling of vision-language-action (VLA) models across heterogeneous datasets. However, approaches to supervising VLAs with latent actions are fragmented and…
We present the first text-to-speech (TTS) system tailored to second language (L2) speakers. We use duration differences between American English tense (longer) and lax (shorter) vowels to create a "clarity mode" for Matcha-TTS. Our…
Classroom debates are a unique form of collaborative learning characterized by fast-paced, high-intensity interactions that foster critical thinking and teamwork. Despite the recognized importance of debates, the role of AI tools,…
We propose a method to teach multiple large language models (LLM) to collaborate by interleaving their generations at the token level. We model the decision of which LLM generates the next token as a latent variable. By optimizing the…
Non-verbal behavior is a central challenge in understanding the dynamics of a conversation and the affective states between interlocutors arising from the interaction. Although psychological research has demonstrated that non-verbal…
Multimodal sentiment analysis is an increasingly popular research area, which extends the conventional language-based definition of sentiment analysis to a multimodal setup where other relevant modalities accompany language. In this paper,…
The rapid adoption of large language models in AI-powered language education has created an urgent need for evaluations that assess pedagogical effectiveness, particularly in language learning--one of the most common LLM use cases (Tamkin…
We propose a flexible probabilistic model for predicting turn-taking patterns in group conversations based solely on individual characteristics and past speaking behavior. Many models of conversation dynamics cannot yield insights that…
Understanding collaborative writing dynamics between native speakers (NS) and non-native speakers (NNS) is critical for enhancing collaboration quality and team inclusivity. In this paper, we partnered with communication researchers to…
This paper introduces GestureCoach, a system designed to help speakers deliver more engaging talks by guiding them to gesture effectively during rehearsal. GestureCoach combines an LLM-driven gesture recommendation model with a rehearsal…
This paper explores how Mixed Reality (MR) and 2D video conferencing influence children's communication during a gesture-based guessing game. Finnish-speaking participants engaged in a short collaborative task using two different setups:…
Mainstream cross-lingual task-oriented dialogue (ToD) systems leverage the transfer learning paradigm by training a joint model for intent recognition and slot-filling in English and applying it, zero-shot, to other languages. We address a…
We study user behavior in the courses offered by a major Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) provider during the summer of 2013. Since social learning is a key element of scalable education in MOOCs and is done via online discussion forums,…
Conversational scenarios are very common in real-world settings, yet existing co-speech motion synthesis approaches often fall short in these contexts, where one person's audio and gestures will influence the other's responses.…
Spoken conversational systems require more than accurate speech generation to have human-like conversations: to feel natural and engaging, they must produce conversational behaviour that adapts dynamically to the context. Current spoken…