SCoT: A Model of Conversational and Tutorial Intelligence

How should dialogue be modeled as part of an ITS? One approach has been to catalogue the dialogue moves found in human tutorial dialogues, and realize them as states in finite state automata that govern the dialog move option space for any input. This approach intertwines the mechanisms of dialogue (e.g., discourse markers, turn management) with the mechanisms of tutoring (e.g., hints, explanations). The joint activity theory (Clark 1996) separates conversational intelligence, i.e. how to use dialogue mechanisms in conversation, from the activity that a dialogue accomplishes. This separation provides for a clearer representation of how and why the structure of a task changes the structure of a dialogue.