Partial List of Speakers

Art Graesser
The University of Memphis
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Talk: Approaches to Designing AutoTutor as a Self-Improving System

Dr. Art Graesser is a professor in the Department of Psychology and the Institute of Intelligent Systems at the University of Memphis and is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. He received his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of California at San Diego. 

Art's primary research interests are in cognitive science, discourse processing, and the learning sciences. More specific interests include knowledge representation, question asking and answering, tutoring, text comprehension, inference generation, conversation, reading, problem solving, memory, emotions, computational linguistics, artificial intelligence, human-computer interaction, and learning technologies with animated conversational agents. He has published over 600 articles in journals, books, and conference proceedings. 

Art has been Principal Investigator or co-PI on 70 grants or contracts -- approximately $45 million of external funding for the University of Memphis. This funding has primarily come from National Science Foundation, Institute of Education Sciences, National Institutes of Health, Office of Naval Research, Army Research Laboratory, and Advanced Distributed Learning.    

Art served as editor of the journal Discourse Processes (1996–2005) and Journal of Educational Psychology (2009-2014) and as president of the Empirical Studies of Literature, Art, and Media (1989-1992), the Society for Text and Discourse (2007-2010), the International Society for Artificial Intelligence in Education (2007-2009), and the Federation of Associations in Behavioral & Brain Sciences (2012-13).  He has participated on four OECD expert panels on problem solving: ,he 2011 Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) on Problem Solving in Technology Rich Environments, the 2012 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) on Complex Problem Solving, PISA 2015 Collaborative Problem Solving (chair), and PIAAC Complex Problem Solving 2021. He has been a member of four expert panels of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, including the recent panel on the second edition of How People Learn.  

Dr. Graesser and his colleagues have designed, developed, and tested software that integrates psychological sciences with learning, language, and discourse technologies.  These include AutoTutor, DeepTutor, ElectronixTutor, MetaTutor, GuruTutor, HURA Advisor, SEEK Web Tutor, Operation ARIES!, iSTART, Writing-Pal, iDRIVE, the Personal Assistant for Life Long Learning (PAL3), AutoCommunicator, Point & Query, Question Understanding Aid (QUAID), QUEST, & Coh-Metrix.

In 2010, Dr. Graesser received the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award (Society for Text and Discourse) and in 2011 he received the Distinguished Contributions of Applications of Psychology to Education and Training Award (American Psychological Association).  On February 28, 2012, Dr. Graesser received the first Presidential Award for Lifetime Achievement in Research from the University of Memphis. This award is the University’s highest level of research recognition given to its faculty. It was established as part of the University’s Centennial fundraising campaign in order to recognize the vital role and impact of research at the University of Memphis.  In 2018 he received the Harold W. McGraw, Jr. Prize in Education.   


Talk Abstract
AutoTutor is an adaptive instructional system that helps students learn by holding a conversation in natural language and helping them interact with external media (Graesser, 2016; Nye, Hu, & Graesser, 2014). The original version of AutoTutor was handcrafted by researchers and not self-improving. However, there have been attempts to make components of the system automated and/or self-improving. This presentation identifies various ways that components of AutoTutor can be automated and could potentially evolve over time as the system is used by students.
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