A dialog system or a conversational agent provides a means for a human to interact with a computer system. Dialog systems use text, voice and other means to carry out conversations with humans in order to achieve some objective. Most dialog systems are created with specific objectives in mind and consist of preprogrammed conversations. The primary…

Technological infrastructure is often taken for granted in our day to day lives until it breaks down, usually because it invisibly supports tasks otherwise. Previous work in HCI has focused on how people react and deal with breaks in infrastructure as well as how to help people to fix or exploit these breaks. However, few have sought to understand…

Learning environment design and development is essential for the field of educational technology, because it is a relatively new field compared to many disciplines of scholarly inquiry. The focus of this dissertation is on the design and development of the EASE system and the general design of EASE History, a case-based learning environment that…

Prior research has highlighted the educational benefit of enabling students to participate in collaborative learning activities. Developing technology that extends the physical boundaries of the classroom and enables students to engage in meaningful collaborative learning activities outside class time can be of significant value. For any…

The Chinese writing system has traditionally organized the typographic text vertically, with one square-shaped character placed on top of another. With the influence of globalization, an increasing number of reading materials have been presented in the Western horizontal format, including school textbooks for children in Taiwan. This study looked…