With the latest advances in conversational agents like Siri and Alexa, and Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and PaLM, Question Answering (QA) systems have become more important. Users submit millions of queries per day and it is up to the system to provide reliable, to-the-point answers. In this dissertation, we explore various aspects to…

This study explored the role of artificial intelligence (AI)-powered conversational agents in human-computer interaction, particularly in the post-coronavirus (COVID-19) era, where digital technologies are central to healthcare, customer service, and education sectors. The research investigated the disruption of context continuity when users…

Machine learning (ML) techniques have been successfully applied to a wide array of applications. This dissertation aims to take application data handling into account when developing ML-based solutions for real-world problems through a holistic framework. To demonstrate the generality of our framework, we consider two real-world applications: spam…

The purpose of this quantitative post measure only experimental study was to determine if, or to what extent, the use of emojis by a chatbot pedagogical agent in a threaded conversation is effective in eliciting social presence, human-like, and engaging perceptions by adult learners living in North America. Social presence theory provided the…

In an era where digital platforms increasingly shape the educational experiences of learners, this dissertation examines activity in the Mathematics Discord Server (MDS), an expansive online learning community used by hundreds of thousands of mathematics learners worldwide. Daily interactions, numbering in the tens of thousands, focused on…

The purpose of this research study was to gain insight into the experiences of secondary English asynchronous distance educators using Intelligent Agents (IA), a technology on the Desire to Learn platform (D2L), that allows for course personalization. The need for this study was made evident through an extensive review of the impact of teacher…

Dialogue systems, commonly called as Chatbots, have gained escalating popularity in recent times due to their wide-spread applications in carrying out chit-chat conversations with users and accomplishing tasks as personal assistants. These systems are typically trained from manually-labeled data and/or written with handcrafted rules and often, use…

This study examines the effectiveness of implementing a chatbot solution to supplement existing student support or service models on campus, specifically for transfer students. Chatbots, an artificial intelligence solution meant to mimic human conversation and personality, have been viewed as a viable option for supporting transfer students…

This thesis aims to implement a prototype system to screen flooding photos from social media. These photos, associated with their geographic locations, can provide free, timely, and reliable visual information about flood events to the decision makers. This system is designed for the application to the real social media images, including several…

Artificial intelligence (AI) that is based upon semantic search has become one of the dominant means for accessing information in recent years. This is particularly the case in mobile contexts, as search-based AI are embedded in each of the major mobile operating systems. The implications are such that information is becoming less a matter of…

As mobile devices have become more common, the need for efficient methods of mobile device text entry has grown. With this growth comes new challenges, as the constraints imposed by the size, processing power, and design of mobile devices impairs traditional text entry mechanisms in ways not seen in previous text entry tasks. To combat this,…