Project

The specific objectives of UNITE include: 

The UNITE project aims to develop evidence-based teaching and learning materials that will facilitate the integration and even incorporation of Dialogue Systems in Italian universities.  

Detailed descriptions of each individual objective can be found by clicking on the designated sections on the right side of this page. 

Providing an overview of available DS which could be integrated in EFL courses. An outline of existing DS to potentially use in EFL teaching is a critical first step in establishing a solid research foundation. Only publicly available tools that use English as communication language will be considered and evaluated. The review process will focus on features related to engagement, representation, actions and expression. Furthermore, DS technologies will be analysed in terms of their potential usability, prioritising DS in the written medium, with the ultimate goal of identifying a diverse range of Dialogue Systems.

Assembling empirical evidence of how Italian university students interact with DS. After determining the most promising DS among those analysed, test sessions will be conducted to investigate the Dialogue Systems' features as well as the user-perceived efficacy of interactions between Italian English learners and DS. 

Compiling corpora/datasets of DS-learners written interactions. Preparing a corpus is a preliminary step that must be carried out appropriately before further analyses. The final result to be achieved is a dialogic corpus of interactions in English, which will be used to explore the capabilities of chatbots and their performance.

Investigating normative discourses in the interactions between DS and users which may generate asymmetries of opportunities and social exclusion.  Due to the distinctive features of dialogue systems, trained on LLMs and capable of entertaining conversations with human users, one of the main issues to be addressed is the potential presence of discriminations, prejudices and biases, which may interfere with students’ learning and overall experience. In order for dialogue systems to be suitable tools for language learning, it is indeed mandatory to tackle these issues – if present – to guarantee equitable, respectful access to language practice to everyone.

Analysing errors in learners’ production which might lead to failure of the interactions and point to the need for further linguistic reinforcement on the part of lecturers. We all learn from our mistakes: learners’ errors are a valuable source of information about both students’ proficiency and chatbots’ capabilities, and tell us the extent to which dialogue systems are able to detect and manage inaccuracies in an efficient manner, so that students can engage in successful interactions.

Creating guidelines and teaching materials for successfully integrating DS in English language courses and for autonomous learning. The results of our study will be crucial to develop materials to support both learners and language teaching professionals in the use of dialogue systems. These resources will be beneficial for the purpose of language learning, while supporting autonomous practice and self-confidence in the use of the foreign language.