トピックアウトライン

  • 一般

    • Toshihiro Kita, Chikako Nagaoka, Naoshi Hiraoka (Kumamoto University), Martin Dougiamas (Moodle HQ)

    • URL of this page : https://demo.tkita.net/rd

  • Moodle

  • VUI （Voice User Interface）

    • VUI is a human-computer interface that allows people to use voice input to control computers and devices.

    • During the last decade VUIs have quickly grown smarter, and have become well known through the spread of :
      • Smartphone voice operation such as Siri, Google Assistant
      • Smart speakers such as Amazon Echo, Google Home

    • VUIs have advantages (Pearl, 2016) over typing, such as faster input speed, hands-free use, and intuitive use.

  • Voice apps (not ours) developed for LMSs

  • Smart speakers connected to a Moodle site

    • VUI-fig1.png

    • Link a Moodle user's account with an Amazon Alexa user's account

  • Attempting Moodle Quizzes through a VUI

  • Difficulties faced in the voice app development

    • Moodle web services API functions shown below was used for the connection between the voice app and Moodle:

      Users’ history of quiz attempts is stored on the Moodle site as usual and can be reviewed by each user.

      The data returned by each web service function are intended for displaying purposes, and were not directly usable as the voice app response.To retrieve question texts, or question answers, the question data in HTML format, whose structure was not explicitly documented, needed to be analyzed.

  • Searching Help Documents of Moodle by Voice Commands

    • MoodleDocs: Popular Moodle online manual maintained by Moodle HQ, covering all the features of Moodle

      Unofficial (complete set of) Japanese version of MoodleDocs was built by translation using Google Cloud Translation API and manually rewriting afterwards.

      (Although there is a Japanese version of MoodleDocs, it is not as rich as the English version and does not cover, in particular, the new Moodle features)

    • We developed a voice app with which users can search the help documentation of Moodle functions and can listen to the result using only voice commands.

      (Assuming it is used on a device / screen different from user's Moodle screen)

    • Screenshot from 2019-10-25 00-43-30.png

    • To be able to retrive any words or a phrase from user's speech,

      • In Dialogflow, sys.any entity is used.
      • For the Alexa Skill, AMAZON.SearchQuery is used as the Slot Type 

    • dialogflow1.png   alexa2.png

    • Responses must be limited to the amount of information that is necessary and sufficient in order to accurately convey the search results by voice.


      Still on a prototype stage. More improvement needed to make it more helpful and userfriendly.

  • Conclusions

    • We developed voice apps to take quizzes on a Moodle site and to search LMS manual documentation via a VUI.

      Although there are currently few examples of LMSs equipped with VUIs, it is considered worthwhile to practically explore the use value of VUIs as a new channel that strengthens the interaction between LMSs and the users.

      Our future plan :

      • Extending the voice app to be able to notify learners and teachers of important activities (such as due or overdue assignments) to support their learning and teaching on Moodle.
      • More intelligent and proactive support for users by importing insight results of Moodle Analytics.