Survey on Intelligent Dialogue in e-Learning Systems

Ever since ancient times, learning was a two-way process, a dialogue among the tutor and the learner. The transfer of knowledge implies social interaction, hence the dialogue is of utmost importance. With the widespread of social media and mobile systems, learners expect quick, easy responses to their questions any time of the day. As e-Learning systems promote time and location flexibility, synchronous dialogue in such systems should not be bound to the time frames that the instructor is available, but should allow learners active real-time feedback throughout the day. Such synchronous interaction is possible through a variety of tools like: automated intelligent grading, intelligent tutoring systems and intelligent facilitator agents embedded in the Learning Management System or social networks. This paper provides an overview of automated dialogue characteristics and a survey on recent research efforts in academia and industry in building intelligent dialogue capable systems. Imagine a system that adapts intelligently to learners’ requests and allows them to take control of their own learning, making the bulky learning interface transparent to the user.