“Let's Go, DUDE!” using the Spoken Dialogue Challenge to teach Spoken Dialogue development

Educational tools are essential in teaching the field of Spoken Dialogue Systems given the complexity and variety of disciplines involved. This paper describes DUDE, a Dialogue and Understanding Development Environment that enables researchers and students to efficiently create Information State Update (ISU) Spoken Dialogue Systems using large scale databases with minimal programming and grammar development. The experience of creating real Spoken Dialogue Systems that they can call through a VoiceXML platform, increases students' motivation and improves learning by grounding key concepts, including introducing students to ISU dialogue modelling.