Human-computer discourse in the design of a PASCAL tutor

Abstract

An effective human-computer discourse system requires more than a clever grammar or a rich knowledge base. It needs knowledge about the user and his understanding of the domain in order to produce a relevant and coherent discourse. We describe MENO, a prototype tutor for elementary PASCAL, which uses a set of speech patterns modelled after complex human discourse and a richly annotated knowledge base to produce a flexible interactive system for the user.