AI AGENTS IN EDUCATION

Our work in Web Platforms has made us leaders and participants in academic, national and international projects which may incorporate research on Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing and new-age Analytics. So far, Publisto has successfully participated in several national and European programs and projects. In this context, it has contributed its experience in the research and implementation of different software solutions and platforms in areas of action related to education and learning. With its extensive design and engineering team, Publisto brings together actors from different sectors for the implementation of highly demanding innovative projects. Publisto’s own in-house product Story Chaser, a speed-reading game platform in iOS and Android, has been a hit game and a one of a kind app that makes reading fun while helping children around the world achieve literacy and closely simulates a world of next generation Intelligent Tutoring Systems. Among its H2020 projects is QTales a web and mobile collaboration platform that enables users to create books and apps for children; and, Stories of Tomorrow an educational platform which will streamline student visions on the future of space collaboration.

Interactive decision trees and conversational assistants developed during these projects and technologies have provided us with the necessary know-how to work on supervised learning systems in the area of educational software. In Stories of Tomorrow, our conversational agents (developed in cooperation among others with the University of Bayreuth, Greece’s Ellinogermaniki Agogi and the Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg) worked with chatmaps defined by the Actor (user, agent), the Message (text), the Action Type and the Callbacks, producing an overall impressive conversational experience for thousands of students. While the interplay of written text and gaming has created a genre on its own in mobile gaming – see our reviews here.

The European Commission aims to increase the total public and private investment in AI in the EU to be at least 20 billion euros by the end of 2020. Following the Commission’s Digital Education Action Plan and the recent JRC paper on the Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Learning, Teaching and Education cited below our focus is to extend our Conversational Agent work done so far in works such as Stories of Tomorrow, QTales and Story Chaser and work diligently to expand conversational technologies under student-centric approaches. This is due to the fact that “data-based AI systems can process very complex data streams in real time. For next-generation Intelligent Tutoring Systems this means that these systems can use real-time input from learner behaviour and also historical data that can be used to model the learner… Although many systems have been developed in the cognitivist tradition and based on an instructivist approach to pedagogy, also other pedagogical models have frequently been used, like the idea that technology can be used to support and scaffold learning and act as a competent guide and companion. As constructionist models have gained popularity, the emphasis has shifted from teaching to more student-centric approaches”, including support for social learning and games such as our Story Chaser. Conversational natural language systems such as the Google Duplex, the GloVe vectors and the recent release of OpenAI general language models such as GPT-2 (see https://talktotransformer.com) will allow us to achieve a more future-oriented vision regarding the use of AI in education with solid, equally forward-looking educational institutions around the world. 

In sum, we aim to continue to provide breakthrough capacities to schools and universities around the world and to push the envelope on what can be done with agent systems on education and learning. We believe that focus must be placed on student-centric approaches (“No AI without UI”) and consider Publisto’s experience ideal in creating bigger and more controllable educational impacts. 

If you have a proposal you feel we can contribute or any queries regarding upcoming Horizon 2020 or other calls in educational technology, do not hesitate to contact our Program Manager Mr. George Pavlinos.