Initiative in Tutorial Dialogue Systems

Computational Models for Mixed Initiative Interaction

Volume

Papers from the 1997 AAAI Spring Symposium

Contents

Tutorial dialogue offers several interesting challenges to mixed-initiative dialogue systems. In this paper, we outline some distinctions between tutorial dialogues and the more familiar task-oriented dialogues, and how these differences might impact our ideas of focus and initiative. In order to ground discussion, we describe our current dialogue system, the Duke Programming Tutor. Through this system, we present a temperature-based model and algorithm which provide a basis for making decisions about dialogue focus and initiative.