A Natural Language Tutorial Dialogue System for Physics

∗A Natural Language Tutorial Dialogue System for PhysicsPamela W. Jordan, Maxim Makatchev, Umarani Pappuswamy,Kurt VanLehn and Patricia AlbaceteLearning Research and Development CenterUniversity of PittsburghPittsburgh PA, 15260{pjordan,maxim,umarani,vanlehn,albacete}@pitt.eduAbstract sought were definitions, terminological classification was agood fit for understanding well enough to respond appropri We describe the WHY2-ATLAS intelligent tutoring system for ately.qualitative physics that interacts with students via natural lan When the student is invited to provide a longer chain ofguage dialogue. We focus on the issue of analyzing and re reasoning, the explanations become multi sentential. Com sponding to multi sentential explanations. We explore ap pare the short explanations requested in Figure 1 to theproaches for achieving a deeper understanding of these expla longer ones in Figures 2 and 3. The explanation in Figure 2nations and dialogue management approaches and strategiesis part of an initial student response and Figure 3 shows thefor providing appropriate feedback on them.explanation from the same student after several follow updialogues with the WHY2-ATLAS tutoring system. A longerIntroduction explanation is unlikely to strictly follow the problem solvingstructure because the student may reorganize it (e.g. give anIn a tutorial system that interacts with a student through nat overview before going into details) and may leave out someural ...