Natural Language Interfaces to support career decision-making of young people

This doctoral study will be highly innovative, extending the scope of current uses of digital technology for career development. The practical work centres on development of a dialogue system utilising existing data held by Skills Development Scotland (SDS), for use by young people to engage 'in conversation' about their career interests, aspirations, and strengths. It will take the form of an interactive avatar with identifiable human characteristics.

In the initial stages of the research, potential applications of Machine Learning for career decision support will be explored. Thereafter innovative approaches to dialogue management will be investigated, drawing upon existing SDS data. The development of novel natural language generation approaches to career decision support will represent a move away from current static template-based interfaces to one that is more dynamic and suited to meet client needs.

Completion of the study will contribute to the careers domain through the provision of state-of-art models in dialogue management, natural language generation and information representation.