The ICICLE Project: An Intelligent Written English Tutoring System for Deaf Students
About:
The ICICLE system (Interactive Computer Identification and Correction of Language Errors) is an intelligent tutoring system underdevelopment in the NLP/AI Group of the CIS Department of the University of Delaware.
The primary goal of ICICLE is to employ natural language processing and generation to tutor deaf students on their written English. Of paramount importance to this goal is the generation of tutorial feedback to student performance which is both correct and individualized, taking into account the language knowledge and learning style of the student, as well as the context of previous explanations and related concepts in the domain.
ICICLE's interaction with the user takes the form of a cycle of user input and system response. The cycle begins when a user submits a piece of writing to review by the system. The system then performs a syntactic analysis on this writing, determines its errors, and constructs a response in the form of tutorial feedback. This feedback is aimed toward making the student aware of the nature of the errors found in the writing and giving him or her the information needed to correct them. When the student makes those corrections and/or other revisions to the piece, it is re-submitted for analysis and the cycle begins again. As ICICLE is intended to be used by an individual overtime and across many pieces of writing, the cycle will be repeated many times.
We at the ICICLE project hope to address many of the serious education issues facing the deaf student whose native language is American Sign Language. The ICICLE system is being designed to meet many of the needs and characteristics of this population as they attempt to improve their skills in written English. The other portions of this website will detail some of the ongoing efforts we are making toward this goal.