Evaluating an intelligent Q&A system for mobile cultural learning

The paper presents a user study designed to evaluate the impact of an intelligent Q&A system for mobile cultural learning on the user’s subjective impressions and retention performance. We have chosen a recent pedagogical framework for mobile learning as a theoretical foundation for this work and designed our system accordingly. In particular, our Q&A system enables individual learners to interact with unknown cultural content under simulated mobile conditions in a well-organised and structured manner using natural language. To investigate the impact of the Q&A system on the participants’ retention of cultural content, we compared two variations of the Q&A system in the lab under simulated mobile conditions. The systems differed both in terms of the approach for processing natural language and style of a Q&A session. Below, we present the results of the study and a series of design recommendations that should aid in the development of more robust Q&A models for mobile cultural systems.