Public Speaking in Virtual Reality: Facing an Audience of Avatars
IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications
Labeling images with a computer game
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
The validity of a virtual human experience for interpersonal skills education
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Social responses to virtual humans: implications for future interface design
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Comparing Interpersonal Interactions with a Virtual Human to Those with a Real Human
IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics
Extending MPML3D to Second Life
IVA '08 Proceedings of the 8th international conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents
Evaluation of Justina: A Virtual Patient with PTSD
IVA '08 Proceedings of the 8th international conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents
Acquiring correct knowledge for natural language generation
Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research
Building effective question answering characters
SigDIAL '06 Proceedings of the 7th SIGdial Workshop on Discourse and Dialogue
Constructionism of virtual humans to improve perceptions of conversational partners
CHI '12 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems
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Educators in medicine, psychology, and the military want to provide their students with interpersonal skills practice. Virtual humans offer structured learning of interview skills, can facilitate learning about unusual conditions, and are always available. However, the creation of virtual humans with the ability to understand and respond to natural language requires costly engineering by conversation knowledge engineers (generally computer scientists), and incurs logistical cost for acquiring domain knowledge from domain experts (educators). We address these problems using a novel crowdsourcing method entitled Human-centered Distributed Conversational Modeling. This method facilitates collaborative development of virtual humans by two groups of end-users: domain experts (educators) and domain novices (students). We implemented this method in a web-based authoring tool called Virtual People Factory. Using Virtual People Factory, medical and pharmacy educators are now creating natural language virtual patient interactions on their own. This article presents the theoretical background for Human-centered Distributed Conversational Modeling, the implementation of the Virtual People Factory authoring tool, and five case studies showing that Human-centered Distributed Conversational Modeling has addressed the logistical cost for acquiring knowledge.