Argumentative Conversational Agents for Online Discussions

Artificial Intelligence is revolutionising our communication practices and the ways in which we interact with each other. This revolution does not only impact how we communicate, but it affects the nature of the partners with whom we communicate. Online discussion platforms now allow humans to communicate with artificial agents in the form of socialbots. Such agents have the potential to moderate online discussions and even manipulate and alter public opinions. In this paper, we propose to study this phenomenon using a constructed large-scale agent platform. At the heart of the platform lies an artificial agent that can moderate online discussions using argumentative messages. We investigate the influence of the agent on the evolution of an online debate involving human participants. The agent will dynamically react to their messages by moderating, supporting, or attacking their stances. We conducted two experiments to evaluate the platform while looking at the effects of the conversational agent. The first experiment is a large-scale discussion with 1076 citizens from Afghanistan discussing urban policy-making in the city of Kabul. The goal of the experiment was to increase the citizen involvement in implementing Sustainable Development Goals. The second experiment is a small-scale debate between a group of 16 students about globalisation and taxation in Myanmar. In the first experiment, we found that the agent improved the responsiveness of the participants and increased the number of identified ideas and issues. In the second experiment, we found that the agent polarised the debate by reinforcing the initial stances of the participant.

Effects of Online English Movie Reviews on Improving Students' Writing

This study aims to study the effectiveness of online English movie reviews for improving university students’English writing in China.English movie reviews can be profitably undertaken to improve university students’writing ability by reading English movie reviews online,discussing topics related to English movie reviews and writing English movie reviews collaboratively.University students have easy access to English movie reviews massively available on the Internet,which renders it possible and feasible for English teachers to use them to improve students’English writing.Online English movie reviews provide students with enough input of model texts,hence they can acquire some appropriate expressions before writing within a short period of time.In addition,discussion on English movie reviews through Emails and QQ platform can activate students’critical thinking to stimulate their original ideas for English movie review writing.Writing English movie reviews collaboratively with the help of Internet can develop students’confidence in writing because of peer feedback and less pressure.

A Study on Student Reflection in Asynchronous Online Text-stimulated Discussions

为了了解学生在网络协作学习中如何进行知识构建和互动,本研究探讨了学生在基于课文内容的非即时在线讨论中如何进行反思。研究着重识别学生参与讨论过程中反思的成份和应用的反思技能。根据建构主义理论的相关学说,这些反思技能被划分为个体认知反思技能和交际互动反思技能两类。通过分析学生在三次基于课文内容的非即时讨论中的帖子,发现学生反思的成份包含个人已有知识经验、课文内容、课外内容以及其他同学的见解,同时总结出学生在讨论过程中应用了十五种反思技能。此外,该研究还分析了学生所应用的各种反思技能的质量高低及各种反思技能被应用的频率。以这十五种反思技能作为最基本的分析单元,就可分析非即时在线讨论课文内容过程中的互动模式以及知识构建的模式和效果。