Conversational Information Seeking: Theory and Application

Abstract

Conversational information seeking (CIS) involves interaction sequences between one or more users and an information system. Interactions in CIS are primarily based on natural language dialogue, while they may include other types of interactions, such as click, touch, and body gestures. CIS recently attracted significant attention and advancements continue to be made. This tutorial follows the content of the recent Conversational Information Seeking book authored by several of the tutorial presenters. The tutorial aims to be an introduction to CIS for newcomers to CIS in addition to the recent advanced topics and state-of-the-art approaches for students and researchers with moderate knowledge of the topic. A significant part of the tutorial is dedicated to hands-on experiences based on toolkits developed by the presenters for conversational passage retrieval and multi-modal task-oriented dialogues. The outcomes of this tutorial include theoretical and practical knowledge, including a forum to meet researchers interested in CIS.