Menu-Gestuurde 'Natuurlijke Taal' Interfaces voor Intelligente Onderwijssystemen

In the DSA-project (Analysis of Dialogue Structure in interactive problem solving) we are studying the relationship between the cognitive aspects of information processing and the communicative process of information exchange during cooperative problem solving. On the basis of analyses of task-dialogues a prototype of a 'Dialogue Monitor' for an "Intelligent" Cooperative System has been implemented. The monitor is the central part of a computer-assisted educational program that 'thinks along' with the student and cooperates in jointly solving a problem task. For the actual interaction with this prototype a menu-based 'natural language' interface has been constructed. By means of interconnected menus the student can select constituents of the utterance he/she wants to create. The interface translates the selections made by the students into 'natural language' (Dutch) sentences. The advantages of this kind of interface are obvious: no ambivalent semantic parsing and no typing skill is required. Furthermore, the interface is very flexible and relatively easy to use. With the interface a large number of different sentences can be constructed (about 3.2 million). The 'Dialogue Monitor' programme has been used experimentally with students (10-12 years old) of two elementary schools. Prerequisites and methods for constructing a menu-based 'natural language' interface are discussed in this article. The first results of students using the interface will be reported.