Robot Tutoring

Abstract

Cognitive Systems and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are getting increasingly popular in many application domains. An upcoming field for AI are educational applications. Natural language processing (NLP) in combination with cognitive systems may provide many interesting possibilities regarding automatic advice and tutoring of students, e.g. by answering students' questions. Therefore, this paper investigates the possibilty of using a cognitive software, namely IBM Watson, as a tool for developing a virtual tutor to answer common questions of students during an introductory Java programming course at a German University of Applied Sciences. The prototype software is evaluated using a qualitative study among participants. While the results indicate the future potential of such systems in education, in its current form it could only replace a tutor in very limited and specific scenarios.