[Colloq] Master's Thesis Defense - Rukmal Fernando, Thursday, Dec. 17

[Rachel Kalweit]

The College of Computer and Information Science presents:

Master's Thesis Defense: Rukmal Fernando

Thursday, Dec. 17 2:00pm
Room 366 West Village H

Title: Automated Explanation of Research Informed Consent
         by Embodied Conversational Agents


Abstract:

Research has shown that the comprehension of documents written by
professionals for laypersons--such as research informed consent
forms--is a challenging task for many due to low literacy level, lack of
prerequisite domain knowledge, and the use of arcane, complex language
that is above the individual's reading level.

Prior work has demonstrated that an embodied conversational agent can
successfully explain research informed consent documents to study
candidates, resulting in higher comprehension and satisfaction compared
to self-study of the document. However, this prior work relied on
scripted explanation dialogue, limiting the ability of the automated
system to be deployed across a large number of studies.

In this thesis I describe a system that automatically and dynamically
generates the explanation for a research informed consent document and
delivers the explanation via an embodied conversational agent, given a
machine-readable description of the document's contents and structure.
This system is evaluated in an empirical study that compares two
versions of the automated approach with self-study of the document.
Results indicate that participants learned more when required to hear
more information from the agent, although they were less satisfied with
this version of the system compared to a version that attempted to
dynamically tailor information to the participant's prior knowledge.


Advisor: Timothy Bickmore

Readers: Carole Hafner
          Michael Paasche-Orlow, BU School of Medicine