dmorin@wpi.WPI.EDU (Duane D Morin) (06/14/91)
I'm in the midst of finishing up my undergraduate thesis on a subject very similar to this (too bad this group didn't exist a year ago!) So, just to test some theories, let me list off what I feel to be some advantages of NL in an educational atmosphere (by definition, here, educational meaning high school level or junior high). Debate as desired: 1) Easy recognition. Students know that if they ant to "compare" two variables in a situation, they type "compare" rather than cmp or menu 2 selection 4. 2) Immediate familiarity. If the student wishes to try something, they can certainly find a good starting place in the way it "should" be worded. Going on the assumption that many students will never have seen a computer menu system, they cannot be expected to be as familiar with that sort of layout. (Note: Of course, students are rapidly becoming more familiar with computers due to home pc's. But, until ALL students have this familiarity, an educational computer system cannot expect to rely on it.) 3) Ease of use for teachers. Many teachers shun computer time simply because they are not confident of their own ability to answer computer based questions from their students. Others become dependent on their schools' support personnel, if such people exist at all. What the teachers need is a system that they can have confidence in and interact with easily, allowing them more freedom to use the computers in their classes. Brief points about my particular system, a natural language statistical data base: Interactive vs. Batch mode : Students can ask questions of the system one at a time, to achieve immediate results, or open up a program file, and make multiple requests as needed. Customized vocabulary: Words in the dictionary that are not common to the students can be replaced by their own choices, making for an easier to use vocabulary. This post was just a thought of mine. I may not have expressed my views very clearly (as a matter of fact, I can guarantee I didn't - you simply can't summarize two years of research and development in one quick post). If this turns into a half decent discussion, I can begin posting excerpts from my thesis, or at least from the experience of the study. Duane Morin Worcester Polytechnic Institute Worcester, MA 01609-2208 dmorin@wpi.wpi.edu
sharp@cpsc.ucalgary.ca (Maurice Sharp) (06/20/91)
In article <1991Jun14.154342.18506@wpi.WPI.EDU> dmorin@wpi.WPI.EDU (Duane D Morin) writes: >1) Easy recognition. Students know that if they ant to "compare" two vars > in a situation, they type "compare" rather than cmp or menu 2 selection 4. This is too simplistic a view of NL usage. What about synonyms ? Worse still, what about reflexivity. That is, the meaning of a word changes depending on the context of use. In addition, the meaning of a word can change as an interaction progresses. In other words, whether students have to learn "cmp", or "compare", or the icon or menu that represents the operation, they still have to learn the interface language. NL does not necessarily make that learning easier. In fact it can make it worse (see below) >2) Immediate familiarity. If the student wishes to try something, they can > certainly find a good starting place in the way it "should" be worded. The problem here is that people tend to assign a full range of abilities based on the demonstration of only a few. That is, if the system demonstrates an ability to understand NL, people will assume it can understand normal english conversation. Since the state of the art is not even close to this (except in very limited domains or toy systems), the students will start using phrases that will not work. >3) Ease of use for teachers. Many teachers shun computer time simply because This is covered by both of the above points. They still need to learn the interface, and they may make more assumptions about what it can do. >Duane Morin >Worcester Polytechnic Institute >Worcester, MA 01609-2208 > >dmorin@wpi.wpi.edu As a general comment, the use of NL is overrated. In some highly constrained domains it may make sense, but as a general user interface tool for any community, the technology just is not there. You are better off designing a system that meets the needs. In other words, you are designing a tool to help get a task accomplished (perhaps teaching addition). Find out a specification of that task, and build a tool to support it. A good place to start is the literature on current tutoring systems. Bill Clancey has done a lot of good work on this. maurice Maurice Sharp MSc. Student (403) 220 7690 University of Calgary Computer Science Department 2500 University Drive N.W. sharp@cpsc.UCalgary.CA Calgary, Alberta, T2N 1N4 GEnie M.SHARP5 -- Maurice Sharp MSc. Student (403) 220 7690 University of Calgary Computer Science Department 2500 University Drive N.W. sharp@cpsc.UCalgary.CA Calgary, Alberta, T2N 1N4 GEnie M.SHARP5