CHAT: a Cultural Heritage Adaptive Tutor

Abstract

The world of distance education is enriching with new tools able to improve the training process. Modern eLearning environments do not simply aim to reproduce the typical processes of the world of traditional education but seek to enrich them thanks to the support of new technologies. In this scenario, the introduction of the Chatbots is interesting. Chatbots are software designed to simulate a conversation with a human being, through sophisticated natural language processing systems, and can support students making the training process more adaptive. In this paper an educational chatbot, CHAT, is presented. This chatbot is able to support students in the study of Cultural Heritage. Through natural language processing techniques and inferential approaches, the proposed Chatbot provides learning contents having a conversation with the students and understanding what their main training needs are. The Chatbot was used in a real context, the archaeological parks of Paestum, Herculaneum and Pompeii where the students can use it obtaining training contents contextualized to their training needs. The results obtained, in terms of student satisfaction, were very satisfactory.