Title: The Development of a Conversational Agent Mentor Interface Using Short Message Service (SMS)
Abstract:Previous studies have investigated the role of embodied conversational agents in providing mentoring advice in faculty- student relationships. One limitation is the need for the protégé to visit a spe...Previous studies have investigated the role of embodied conversational agents in providing mentoring advice in faculty- student relationships. One limitation is the need for the protégé to visit a specific website to access the agent (mentor). This paper presents the design and development of a conversational agent mentor that uses a more pervasive application for dialogue, short message service (SMS). The SMS conversational agent has been constructed to be used as a virtual mentor, to mentor undergraduate computer science majors at a Historically Black College (HBCU) who are considering pursuing a graduate degree in computing. This study has been designed to compare the effectiveness of the SMS conversational agent to the original conversational agent, an embodied conversational agent (ECA).Read More