A human–computer debating system prototype and its dialogue strategies

This article reports research concerning issues involved in adopting a computational dialectics approach to develop a human–computer debating system for educational debate. In particular, we propose a suitable dialogue model and a set of computationally usable strategic heuristics to enable the computer to engage its users in debate on a controversial issue. The system has been fully implemented. It is anticipated that this work will contribute toward the development of human–computer dialogue in general and of computer-based educational dialogue in particular and help to illuminate research issues in the field of dialectics itself.