The Application of Learning Theories into Abdullah: An Intelligent Arabic Conversational Agent Tutor

This paper outlines the research and development of a Conversational Intelligent tutoring System (CITS) named Abdullah focusing on the novel application of learning theories. Abdullah CITS is a software program intended to converse with students aged 10 to 12 years old about the essential topics in Islam in natural language. The CITS aims to mimic human Arabic tutor by engaging the students in dialogue using Modern Arabic language (MAL), and classical Arabic language (CAL), utilizing supportive evidence from the Quran and Hadith. Abdullah CITS is able to capture the user’s level of knowledge and adapt the tutoring session and tutoring style to suit that particular learner’s level of knowledge. This is achieved through the inclusion of several learning theories implemented in Abdullah’s architecture, which are applied to make the tutoring suited to an individual learner. There are no known specific learning theories for CITS therefore the novelty of the approach is in the combination of well-known learning theories typically employed in a classroom environment. The system was evaluated through end user testing with the target age group in schools in Jordan and the UK. The initial evaluation has produced some positive results, indicating that Abdullah is gauging the individual learner’s knowledge level and adapting the tutoring session to ensure learning gain is achieved.

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