Factual Question Generation for the Portuguese Language

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has seen numerous applications in the area of Education. Through the use of educational technologies such as Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS), learning possibilities have increased significantly. One of the main challenges for the widespread use of ITS is the ability to automatically generate questions. Bearing in mind that the act of questioning has been shown to improve the students learning outcomes, Automatic Question Generation (AQG) has proven to be one of the most important applications for optimizing this process. We present a tool for generating factual questions in Portuguese by proposing three distinct approaches. The first one performs a syntax-based analysis of a given text by using the information obtained from Part-of-speech tagging (PoS) and Named Entity Recognition (NER). The second approach carries out a semantic analysis of the sentences, through Semantic Role Labeling (SRL). The last method extracts the inherent dependencies within sentences using Dependency Parsing. All of these methods are possible thanks to Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques. For evaluation, we have elaborated a pilot test that was answered by Portuguese teachers. The results verify the potential of these different approaches, opening up the possibility to use them in a teaching environment.

I. Introduction

AI is changing the world, either the way we live, work or learn. There is a growth in the use of AI in teaching and learning, from primary to higher education. Educational tools provided by AI have recently attracted attention for their potential to improve teaching quality and enhance traditional learning methods. One of the important challenges in the area is concerning with the development of suitable questions to assess a student's knowledge or understanding. However, the current process is to have teachers writing the questions, which is very time consuming. It is thus important to address this task through AI mechanisms that automate the process of question generation.