An agent proposal for Reading Understanding: Applied to the resolution of maths problems

In this paper, a Reading Understanding Agent, applied to the resolution of Maths problems, called Dr. Roland, for students who are between 12-13 years old is proposed. The agent is designed to interact with the students in natural language through an easy and intuitive interface. For the development of the agent, a User-Centered Design has been followed to take into account the opinion of teachers and students. The preliminary results with a group of 40 students have provided some evidence of the usability of the agent, and its usefulness to increase the motivation levels towards the resolution of Maths problems. On the other hand, the results gathered have not shown evidence of a positive correlation between the use of the Agent, and higher ability to solve the Maths problems.