The vision of having a computer communicate with
humans in natural language was entertained shortly after
the computer was invented. Weizenbaum’s (1966) ELIZA
program was the first conversation system that was reasonably
successful, popular,
and widely
used. ELIZA
simulated
a Rogerian
client-centered psychotherapist, as
illustrated
in the conversation
below.
AutoTutor
presents challenging problems (formulated as questions) from a curriculum
script
and then engages in mixed initiative dialogue that guides the student in building an answer.
It
provides
the student with positive, neutral, or negative feedback on the student’s
typed responses,
pumps
the student for more information, prompts the student to fill in missing words, gives hints, fills
in
missing information with assertions, identifies and corrects erroneous ideas, answers the student’s
questions,
and summarizes answers. AutoTutor
has produced learning gains of approximately .70 sigma
for
deep levels of comprehension.