Inspiration
One of my favorite school memories was of my literature class where we had intimate discussions on books and short stories together. Not only was it a fun way to learn, it was a smart way to learn. "[T]he dual action of speaking and hearing oneself... has the most beneficial impact on memory," a study by the University of Waterloo found.
This project hopes to nurture discussion between Alexa and students.
What it does
- Provides review sessions on the first three chapters for free
- Goes over multiple-choice questions on the story and literary devices (symbolism, polysyndeton, etc.)
- Converses with the user in forming an answer to a free response question
- Lets customers review the rest of the book (chapters 4-9) through in-skill purchase
How it's built
- Uses an intent-based dialog manager to handle chapter selections and multiple-choice question answers
- Uses Alexa Conversations to handle answers to free response questions; this allows:
- collection of multiple parts of a free response answer - who, what, where, when, why, and how
- conversational memory without complicating the back-end
- less time spent on dialog creation
- Uses a Node.js back-end to delegate between the two dialog managers
Challenges I ran into
Learning how to use Alexa Conversations was a big challenge that I could not have overcome without the help of Justin Jeffress, Sam Ingbar, Nathan Grice, and the other wonderful people of the Alexa team.
What's next
- A time when we can ask Alexa, "start a review session on Romeo and Juliet"
- A time when we can ask Alexa, "start a review session on Night by Elie Wiesel"
- A time when we can ask Alexa, "start a review session on Midnight's Children"
What I learned
When dealing with an input set as infinite as the English language, Alexa Conversations is a must-have tool.
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