P22 BYOD: Building a Better Bot: Learning Design Powered by IBM’s Watson
8:30 AM - 4:30 PM Tuesday, October 23
Barbados A
You may have experienced chat bots in your daily life as simple marketing and customer service tools. But what are the opportunities to use this same technology to enhance learning and performance support? When it comes to chat bots and learning, conversational app design and machine learning tools that can actually learn to interpret users’ intentions show amazing promise for the future of online learning—especially if we can give these intelligent bots more interesting and impactful conversations to have with our learners.
In this hands-on workshop, you will learn to build an effective chat bot conversation application from scratch without needing be versed in coding beforehand. You’ll find out about the basic elements of a chat bot, familiarize yourself with Watson and IBM BlueMix as a development tool, and take on practical exercises that make the novel concept of conversational learning applications more approachable, ultimately allowing you to design bots that are strategic and impactful. You will leave the session with a basic grasp of machine learning and a functioning bot you can teach, improve, and use as a template for future AI projects in your daily work.
In this session, you will learn:
- How to use IBM Bluemix and Watson’s Natural Language Processing to build a simple conversation chat bot that provides relevant replies in the form of text or links
- Techniques for building complex dialog flows that use entities and branching to provide tailored responses
- Ways to train your chat bot to build its knowledge and comprehension and improve the conversation experience for your users
- How you can use GitHub and IBM BlueMix to set up a simple, free live application for your new bot, allowing anyone to converse with it at a dedicated URL
- How to apply machine learning and natural language processing as a means of solving real-world learning problems, including content curation, soft-skills training simulations, and performance support
Audience:
Designers, developers, and managers. Participants should be technically savvy and eager to explore new tools, but do not need to be versed in coding or familiar with IBM BlueMix already. Proficiency with modern rapid authoring tools should be enough to allow any participant to learn from this workshop and leave with a completed bot. Basic HTML coding experience would be useful, but is not required.
Technology discussed in this session:
IBM Bluemix, Watson Conversation Service, GitHub.
Participant technology requirements:
An internet-connected laptop with a current version of Chrome or Firefox installed.
Travis Waugh
Instructional Technologist
The Georgia Institute of Technology
Travis Waugh is an instructional technologist for The Georgia Institute of Technology. Travis has been helping adults learn in-person and online for over a decade. He has taught English as a second language in Japan, crafted IT training solutions for large corporations, and met the compliance and professional development needs of faculty and staff in higher education. A passionate advocate for the sound use of technology in adult learning, Travis has contributed to the learning and development community as a writer, conference presenter, and private consultant for corporate learning teams.