Automatic Assessment of Collaborative Chat Conversations with PolyCAFe

The wider acceptance and usage of instant messaging (chat) represents one of the consequences of undertaking Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) practices in formal education settings. However, the difficulty of analyzing these textual artifacts of learners in order to offer them feedback represents a serious problem in further extending the usage of chat conversations. PolyCAFe is a system that was designed to support the tutors and to provide automatic feedback for the learners engaged in collaborative chat conversations and discussion forums. The architecture of the system is presented by focusing on two key components: the assessment of the utterances and of the collaborative discourse. PolyCAFe‟s effectiveness has been proved in a validation experiment with students and tutors from a University course. The main findings from this trial, together with the conclusions of domain experts verifying the accuracy of the assessment provided by PolyCAFe, are also analyzed and commented in detail.