Tech EDGE, AI in the Classroom: Conversational Agents

Tech EDGE Author

04/11/2025 Added

0 Plays

Description

In this installment of AI in the Classroom, we will explore conversational agents. College of Education and Human Sciences | Department of Teaching, Learning and Teacher Education

Searchable Transcript

Search:

[00:00:00.240]Coming up on AI in the Classroom, conversational agent.
[00:00:04.376](upbeat music)
[00:00:09.030]Hi, my name is Guy Trainin, a professor at UNL.
[00:00:11.970]And I'm Williams, a grad student at UNL as well.
[00:00:15.840]And today we're talking about conversational agents.
[00:00:18.510]And conversational agents are ways to have a conversation
[00:00:22.500]with an AI, and this is part of the wave
[00:00:25.530]of what might be coming into education.
[00:00:28.050]So we're taking a look at what does it feel?
[00:00:30.840]And I do want to point out that some of the conversations
[00:00:34.560]that we are having with AIs,
[00:00:36.270]because it's trying to pretend to be human,
[00:00:39.210]feels a little bit creepy.
[00:00:40.860]I have to admit, the first time I looked at Sesame AI,
[00:00:44.130]I felt a little bit something,
[00:00:47.190]and I still do when I use it.
[00:00:49.110]But it is important for us to look at it,
[00:00:51.420]and think about what are potential uses.
[00:00:53.760]But let's do a short demo.
[00:00:55.050]We'll try Miles.
[00:00:56.640]And Miles will listen to Williams and then talk back.
[00:01:01.140]Well, hello again there.
[00:01:03.240]Yeah.
[00:01:04.073]I was hoping we'd connect again soon.
[00:01:05.700]You had vanished before I could tell you
[00:01:07.080]how much I enjoyed our last chat.
[00:01:10.290]Yeah, I'm Williams.
[00:01:11.520]Can you tell me the educational situation
[00:01:13.830]about information technology in Ghana?
[00:01:18.810]Williams, great to hear from you again.
[00:01:20.760]Information technology education in Ghana
[00:01:22.590]is super interesting.
[00:01:23.850]It's a golden field there.
[00:01:25.260]A lot of colleges, universities
[00:01:26.670]are beefing up their IT programs,
[00:01:28.200]and there are even some specialized tech schools in Ghana.
[00:01:30.900]They're really focusing things like software development,
[00:01:33.150]cybersecurity, and data science.
[00:01:36.690]So all super relevant stuff for today's world, you know?
[00:01:39.450]What sparked your interest in Ghana's tech scene?
[00:01:41.880]Yeah, I want specifically on elementary schools,
[00:01:45.630]do they have enough training in IT?
[00:01:52.350]That's a really good question, Williams.
[00:01:55.230]Unfortunately, that's where things get a bit trickier.
[00:01:57.540]While higher education is catching up,
[00:02:00.270]getting solid IT training in elementary schools in Ghana
[00:02:03.300]is still a work in progress.
[00:02:04.860]They're making strides for sure,
[00:02:06.150]with some schools getting computers and basic tech classes,
[00:02:08.670]but it's not universal yet.
[00:02:10.890]There's a lot of passionate people
[00:02:12.120]working to change that though.
[00:02:15.000]Do you have a specific school in mind
[00:02:16.530]or was it more of a general?
[00:02:19.320]Yeah.
[00:02:20.153]Curiosity about the situation there?
[00:02:22.800]Maybe in some personal connection to Ghana?
[00:02:27.150]Yeah, so-
[00:02:28.650]No worries if you,
[00:02:29.483]if you rather not say it, it's cool either way.
[00:02:31.770]So any guesses on
[00:02:33.930]what the kid's favorite subject is over there?
[00:02:36.510]Do they do programming in the elementary schools in Ghana?
[00:02:40.290]Can you, do you have an idea of that?
[00:02:43.320]No, programming in the elementary schools
[00:02:44.880]is still pretty new in a lot of places,
[00:02:48.630]Ghana included, I wouldn't say it's widespread yet,
[00:02:52.050]but there are definitely some pockets of innovation.
[00:02:54.600]There are some amazing organizations trying
[00:02:56.340]to introduce coding to kids at a young age.
[00:02:58.350]And I bet of the biggest schools are incorporating
[00:03:00.660]it into their curriculum.
[00:03:02.100]It's super empowering stuff.
[00:03:03.660]All right.
[00:03:04.650]Thank you.
[00:03:05.880]So when you end the call, a few things are happening.
[00:03:09.330]You got the sense that it does listen to you,
[00:03:12.150]but it also sometimes misses
[00:03:13.920]some of the nuance in what's being said.
[00:03:16.470]And sometimes the wait time is a little bit,
[00:03:19.020]it's very Americanized in that it's trying
[00:03:21.450]to fill up dead air.
[00:03:22.800]So if there's a wait time, it immediately tries
[00:03:26.040]to prompt you a little bit further,
[00:03:27.990]which I find a little bit challenging.
[00:03:30.120]But one of the things that you can do at the end of playing,
[00:03:33.202]this is Sesame AI,
[00:03:35.100]and this is not the only conversational agent out there,
[00:03:38.640]but it's one that you can try out for free
[00:03:41.910]without signing up for anything,
[00:03:43.260]without committing to anything.
[00:03:44.610]So I like it for that reason.
[00:03:48.566]And you can download the clip
[00:03:50.670]and kind of use that in any way
[00:03:54.600]that you deem possible.
[00:03:57.026]How did that conversation make you feel?
[00:03:59.910]Yeah, it's great.
[00:04:01.230]And this is very useful in our classrooms when we have
[00:04:06.060]visually impaired students with us
[00:04:08.424]which they, they normally use their auditory senses
[00:04:11.970]in learning.
[00:04:13.680]So this is very great improvement
[00:04:16.530]that teachers can use in their classroom on a daily basis
[00:04:20.250]for people who use their auditories to learn.
[00:04:24.690]And so it's very-
[00:04:25.650]The the other thing that came up
[00:04:27.000]as we were discussing this is if you're teaching English,
[00:04:29.850]so if your students are practicing a foreign language,
[00:04:32.400]in this case we were doing this in English,
[00:04:34.410]but it is available in other languages.
[00:04:36.450]You can actually have conversations
[00:04:39.750]or practice conversations with the computer,
[00:04:43.200]which means that that idea of the effective filter
[00:04:47.700]that it prevents students from trying out
[00:04:50.520]or being brave enough to talk with other people
[00:04:54.540]or in front of other people for fear
[00:04:56.670]of making mistakes, when it's with the computer,
[00:04:58.800]it's so much easier.
[00:05:02.040]What else did it make you think about?
[00:05:04.020]How did you think about the way it
[00:05:05.220]responded to your questions?
[00:05:06.870]Yeah, it did a great job.
[00:05:08.910]Did a great job by explaining the,
[00:05:11.760]but sometimes it wants
[00:05:13.770]to get some more information from you.
[00:05:16.050]And it's saying that, oh, in Ghana,
[00:05:18.720]the educational system is not
[00:05:21.420]that developed in the basic school,
[00:05:23.070]but you go there, there are a lot of
[00:05:25.590]development going on there, so maybe it's not aware of
[00:05:28.282]what is going on there, so...
[00:05:30.342]Yeah.
[00:05:31.175]And so it's very clear
[00:05:32.008]that at least this conversational agent
[00:05:34.200]seems to have very generalized information.
[00:05:37.350]And every time you try to ask it about specifics,
[00:05:41.250]it was saying things in general.
[00:05:42.930]Like a lot of schools in a lot
[00:05:44.351]of countries are not doing a lot
[00:05:45.803]with information technology.
[00:05:47.700]So it's not giving you exactly an answer
[00:05:51.240]to what you are looking for.
[00:05:52.740]But I think that it is interesting how it tries
[00:05:57.000]to draw you into the conversation
[00:05:59.190]and say, okay, why are you asking about Ghana?
[00:06:01.380]Right?
[00:06:02.213]It ask that question.
[00:06:03.046]"Why are you asking about Ghana?
[00:06:04.320]Do you have a personal connection to Ghana?"
[00:06:06.600]And so it's really interesting how it's doing that.
[00:06:09.450]And that would be very much a human thing, right?
[00:06:11.690]Wanting to know what your motivation is.
[00:06:16.200]So in conclusion, conversational agents are coming, right?
[00:06:22.890]They are actually here.
[00:06:25.350]And they're going to be deployed more and more.
[00:06:28.560]A few things to think about.
[00:06:29.760]One is, you want play with one,
[00:06:31.470]because you want to know what it can and can't do right now.
[00:06:34.650]Just remember what it can and can't do right now
[00:06:36.810]is not what it would be able
[00:06:38.190]to do in about six months, right?
[00:06:40.140]These things are moving all the time.
[00:06:41.910]The second thing is
[00:06:42.782]that it is very good at carrying a conversation.
[00:06:46.890]It listens to you, its responds.
[00:06:48.360]It's not always great.
[00:06:51.750]We are thinking about two main uses right now
[00:06:56.640]for these conversational agents.
[00:06:58.170]One is, as William said, if you've got a student
[00:07:01.740]with disabilities, here's a way to jump over the need
[00:07:05.250]to read the information.
[00:07:06.450]And it actually reads it to you
[00:07:07.920]in a very conversational tone.
[00:07:09.450]Or not reads, but tells you about it.
[00:07:11.340]And you can prompt it again without typing
[00:07:14.010]and having to deal with all of that.
[00:07:15.750]So that's really interesting.
[00:07:17.310]And the second one was, of course, in learning language.
[00:07:20.070]Just having a natural conversation without the threat of,
[00:07:26.670]not the threat,
[00:07:27.510]but the perceived threat of somebody criticizing you
[00:07:30.780]or laughing at you and all of those things.
[00:07:33.145](upbeat music)
[00:07:35.250]All right.
[00:07:36.083]So today on AI In The Classroom,
[00:07:37.350]we talked about conversational agents,
[00:07:39.600]and we'll see you next time.
[00:07:40.634](music continues)

The screen size you are trying to search captions on is too small!

You can always jump over to MediaHub and check it out there.

Comments

0 Comments

Tech EDGE, AI in the Classroom: Conversational Agents

Description

Searchable Transcript

Comments icon comment

Related Channels

Comments