Dialogue-Based Language Training

We propose to investigate and report requirements for the development of a authorable, dialogue-based information and procedural tutor. In particular we propose to: develop the rules for an artificial intelligence system that will allow instructional personnel to easily develop, expand and maintain knowledge representations; develop the conceptual approach and design a system that will allow users to add new nouns to the lexical semantics structure; develop a full English language Natural Language Processing system. The innovations will be integrated with an existing and easy to use authorable tutoring system. The integrated tutor will allow instructors to easily develop lessons in a wide variety of domains. The completed tutoring system will include: 1) an authorable knowledge base that will allow the addition and modification of domains, 2) a state of the art English natural language processing system, 3) an authoring interface to the lexical semantics structure that will allow non-linguists to enter new nouns, 4) a dialogue management and language generation system, and 5) a general-purpose instructional authoring module that will allow instructional developers to develop training material in a wide variety of domains. This tool will significantly advance the state-of-the-art in dialogue-based authoring tools and tutors. Significant commercial potential exists for a intelligent tutoring system that can be directly transportable to a broad range of learning domains. The potential markets for a intelligent computerized authorable tool include training developers in the military and in industry, researchers in computer-based instruction, commercial education publishers, and professional educators.