Sonderforschungsbereich Hybrid Societies
Teilprojekt "Credibility & Language Varieties (CLaVa):
Acceptance of conversational pedagogical agents" (2019-23)
Principal Investigators
Prof. Dr. Maximilian Eibl, Media Informatics, Chemnitz University of Technology, Straße der Nationen 62, 09107 Chemnitz, 0371 / 531-25780, maximilian.eibl@informatik.tu-chemnitz.de
Prof. Dr. Günter Daniel Rey, Psychology of Learning with Digital Media, Chemnitz University of Technology, Straße der Nationen 12, 09107 Chemnitz, 0371 / 531-33746, guenter-daniel.rey@phil.tu-chemnitz.de
Prof. Dr. Josef Schmied, English Language and Linguistics, Chemnitz University of Technology, Reichenhainer Straße 39, 09126 Chemnitz, 0371 / 531-34226, josef.schmied@phil.tu-chemnitz.de
Summary and Main Research Question
This interdisciplinary project focusses on the specific linguistic qualities of an embodied conversational agent’s responses to spoken human input (machine-human interaction). More concretely, we are interested in how a virtual conversational pedagogical agent – as a special case of an embodied conversational agent – should verbally respond in its interaction with human learners to ensure success in communication and consequently in learning. Our main research question is two-fold: First, we investigate whether success in human-machine communication can be maximized by using deep artificial neural networks to generate and employ digital personae; second, we investigate whether virtual conversational pedagogical agents using personae in human-machine multimedia learning scenarios increase success in learning through social acceptance by human learners. Therefore, the project is located at the intersection of Corpus-/Sociolinguistics, Deep Artificial Neural Networks, and pedagogical agents within machine-human interaction in hybrid societies.
