Abstract:

The Voice User Interfaces allow users to interact with the system by voice. Currently, the best known examples of this type of technology are voice assistants such as Siri, Google Assistant and Alexa. The voice-based interaction provides different advantages, among them: naturalness and speed of interaction, freedom of interaction without the use of hands, and empathy.

In education, voice assistants are offering alternatives to personalize learning and skill development for students. The introduction of this technology in education has grown thanks to the fact that the companies that develop these assistants allow the creation of applications and their cost-free use.

From the point of view of usability, it is a challenge to design applications for these assistants, since they must allow students to be able to use them without needing the intervention of a teacher or tutor to guide them so that they can advance in the development of their skills autonomously.

On the other hand, the pandemic derived from COVID-19 has highlighted the need for students to develop their information literacy, since students had to resort to online information sources and did not always check that the information found was valid, reliable and relevant to solve their research problem.

This paper describes how the Alexa assistant can be used to support students in developing their information management skills by developing a Skill for Alexa that helps them to carry out an investigation following the Gavilan Model. The Gavilan Model is a strategy that guides students to solve information problems.

The skill was designed for Mexican students between the ages of 15 and 20. To establish the requirements of the application, we analyzed the information reported by the participants of a diploma course for high school and undergraduate teachers in Mexico and Chile, on the problems that students have when conducting research.

The skill was evaluated with users to measure its usability. To maintain sanitary measures, the evaluation was conducted remotely using a video call platform.

The application reached adequate usability levels to be used autonomously by the students, from these evaluations, improvement opportunities were identified that allowed obtaining a more robust skill.

Keywords:

Voice Assistant, Information Management Skills, Alexa, Gavilan Model.