Related papers: Conversational Agents and Children: Let Children L…
We present pathways of investigation regarding conversational user interfaces (CUIs) for children in the classroom. We highlight anticipated challenges to be addressed in order to advance knowledge on CUIs for children. Further, we discuss…
Conversational agents are increasingly used in education for learning support. An application is "learning by explaining", where learners explain their understanding to an agent. However, existing research focuses on single roles, leaving…
Conversational practice, while crucial for all language learners, can be challenging to get enough of and very expensive. Chatbots are computer programs developed to engage in conversations with humans. They are designed as software avatars…
When deploying autonomous agents in the real world, we need effective ways of communicating objectives to them. Traditional skill learning has revolved around reinforcement and imitation learning, each with rigid constraints on the format…
Digital agents are considered a general-purpose technology. They spread quickly in private and organizational contexts, including education. Yet, research lacks a conceptual framing to describe interaction with such agents in a holistic…
It may be difficult for some individuals to open up and share their thoughts and feelings in front of a mental health expert. For those who are more at ease with a virtual agent, conversational agents can serve as an intermediate step in…
Emphasizing problem formulation in AI literacy activities with children is vital, yet we lack empirical studies on their structure and affordances. We propose that participatory design involving teachable machines facilitates problem…
To cooperate with humans effectively, virtual agents need to be able to understand and execute language instructions. A typical setup to achieve this is with a scripted teacher which guides a virtual agent using language instructions.…
Developmental machine learning studies how artificial agents can model the way children learn open-ended repertoires of skills. Such agents need to create and represent goals, select which ones to pursue and learn to achieve them. Recent…
Information access systems such as search engines and generative AI are central to how people seek, evaluate, and interpret information. Yet most systems are designed to optimise retrieval rather than to help users develop better search…
Conversational teachable agents offer a promising platform to support learning, both in the classroom and in remote settings. In this context, the agent takes the role of the novice, while the student takes on the role of teacher. This…
Current conversational AI systems aim to understand a set of pre-designed requests and execute related actions, which limits them to evolve naturally and adapt based on human interactions. Motivated by how children learn their first…
Autonomous discovery and direct instruction are two distinct sources of learning in children but education sciences demonstrate that mixed approaches such as assisted discovery or guided play result in improved skill acquisition. In the…
Humans have developed the capability to teach relevant aspects of new or adapted tasks to a social peer with very few task demonstrations by making use of scaffolding strategies that leverage prior knowledge and importantly prior joint…
This paper presents two studies on how Brazilian children (ages 9--11) use conversational agents (CAs) for schoolwork, discovery, and entertainment, and how structured scaffolds can enhance these interactions. In Study 1, a seven-week…
We will demonstrate a conversational products recommendation agent. This system shows how we combine research in personalized recommendation systems with research in dialogue systems to build a virtual sales agent. Based on new deep…
In this survey we present different approaches that allow an intelligent agent to explore autonomous its environment to gather information and learn multiple tasks. Different communities proposed different solutions, that are in many cases,…
The development of artificial agents able to learn through dialog without domain restrictions has the potential to allow machines to learn how to perform tasks in a similar manner to humans and change how we relate to them. However,…
In children's collaborative learning, effective peer conversations can significantly enhance the quality of children's collaborative interactions. The integration of Large Language Model (LLM) agents into this setting explores their novel…
The conversational search task aims to enable a user to resolve information needs via natural language dialogue with an agent. In this paper, we aim to develop a conceptual framework of the actions and intents of users and agents explaining…