PC as personal companion for computer studies
Issue date: 10/24/05 Section: News Briefs
Can a personal computer be programmed to behave like a student and work with a human classmate to solve difficult problems in computer science?
And, can this computer student "peer" find acceptance among female undergraduates, whose enrollment numbers in computer science are on the decline?
Barbara Di Eugenio, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Illinois at Chicago, thinks so. She and her colleagues Pamela Jordan and Sandra Katz, research associates at the University of Pittsburgh's Learning Research and Development Center, will split a $520,000, three-year National Science Foundation grant to produce a program they call a "dialog agent" that will think, react and speak like a college student -- but also ultimately know answers to questions to help keep the student-computer interaction on a productive track.
Di Eugenio, Jordan and Katz will collaborate with psychology professor David Allbritton of DePaul University. The project also has the endorsement of UIC's new Learning Sciences Research Institute.
While many software programs, such as search engines, can seem amazingly intuitive, Di Eugenio said the new dialog agent she's developing will need to be even more sophisticated in the way it interacts with users.
"If the computer has to interact with students, it really has to know the answers already," she said. "But we want to set parameters so the computer acts like a student peer. The computer may know everything, but it won't say everything right away, because it wants to encourage the student to participate."
And, can this computer student "peer" find acceptance among female undergraduates, whose enrollment numbers in computer science are on the decline?
Barbara Di Eugenio, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Illinois at Chicago, thinks so. She and her colleagues Pamela Jordan and Sandra Katz, research associates at the University of Pittsburgh's Learning Research and Development Center, will split a $520,000, three-year National Science Foundation grant to produce a program they call a "dialog agent" that will think, react and speak like a college student -- but also ultimately know answers to questions to help keep the student-computer interaction on a productive track.
Di Eugenio, Jordan and Katz will collaborate with psychology professor David Allbritton of DePaul University. The project also has the endorsement of UIC's new Learning Sciences Research Institute.
While many software programs, such as search engines, can seem amazingly intuitive, Di Eugenio said the new dialog agent she's developing will need to be even more sophisticated in the way it interacts with users.
"If the computer has to interact with students, it really has to know the answers already," she said. "But we want to set parameters so the computer acts like a student peer. The computer may know everything, but it won't say everything right away, because it wants to encourage the student to participate."