Assignment - Proposal, Literature Review, Research Method

1. Abstract
- Summary of the knowledge gap: problems of the existing research
- Aim of the research, summary of what this project is to achieve
- Summary of the approach or methodology and innovation
- Summary of the expected outcomes and significance

The above four points need to be clearly stated, each have at least 2 sentences. The approach/method part needs to have minimum 4 sentences.

2. Introduction
An overview of the existing research related to the proposed research. The summary view of your views from broad scan and focused reading.
Broad Scan moves to Appendix 1

3. Related work
- Select one type of the research methods (qualitative, quantitative, new product/technology)
- Select one of the existing research articleswhich applied the selected research method
- If the article was not one of the focused reading article in the assignment 1, a focused reading needs to be conducted for it; otherwise, it needs to be improved according to the review of the first assignment.
- The focused reading of the article shall be included here, with answers to the following questions
o What did the authors do (key contributions)
o Why did the authors conduct the research (existing problems)
o What are the key differences in the method/approach (innovation)
o What are main achievements, significance
o What can be further improved
o Research problem identified (to be reflected in the proposed research)

Note
- Each of the above questions needs to be covered with one paragraph; each paragraph contains minimum 4 sentences.
- The research problem identified will be addressed in the proposed research part.
- Particularly, the research problem will be addressed by applying Alexa or Dialogflow agents. Example improvements can be
o better way to collect data
o better way to provide feedback
o combining chatbots with other technology/products to form a new product/technology which has beneficial applications
- Conduct a literature review on whether other research has applied chatbots to address the same problem. Provide a summary overview on what related works have been done and what has not been done. The related work shall be included in the reference and cited here, according to a selected citation/reference style.

4. Proposed Research (give a title of it)

4.1 Problem statement: clearly define the problem identified in section 3
4.2 Aim of the research: what to be achieved; elaborate on the objectives in details
4.3 Expected outcomes and significance, how would chatbot improve the research; list the key benefits
4.4 Method and innovation: apply Alexa/Dialogflow agents to improve ...
- Architecture or structure diagram of your proposed method
- Chatbot interaction with users
Invocation, intents, dialogs, slots/parameters (Attach the JSON of agents attached in Appendix B)
- Lambda functions to bridge the chatbot with the server-side processing
Pseudo code of the logic or flow diagram (Source code to be attached in Appendix B)
- Server-side processing
1) Database design (what are key information to be kept)
2) Database table management (web interface to display, insert, delete or update the data, use the template code and adjust to fit the project)
3) Intent handling
Source codes and the SQL scripts of the database to be attached in Appendix B;
- Preliminary study
Description of typical scenarios (minimum 2), the possible interactions, the expected improvement addressing the research problem
Screenshots of the preliminary study

5.Conclusion
What has been proposed, what has been done, what improvement has been achieved, what understanding has been gained from the preliminary study, what can be further improved.

6. References
Follow one of the reference styles

7 Appendix

Appendix A. Literature Review - Broad Scan and Reading (minimum 3 rounds)

Round 1
- What initially interests leading to the choice of initial keywords
- Keywords,source/research database, number of results returned
- Result (first 20+, with no detailed abstracts)
Title, author, year, journal/conference title
- Review & Summary
what was your opinion read from the list, what consideration led to the new set of keywords;
common mistakes: review has no clear link with the list returned, new keywords are not used in the following search.
The quality of your view makes essential difference of the quality of the work!! Shall carries at least a paragraph of 6-10 lines
- New Keywords derived
- Detail reading article/work identified-Title, author, year, journal/conference title, abstract
- Appendix (need to be conducted in round 1 broad scan but to be included at the end of the document, not here) including first 20+ returned search including detailed abstracts
Title, author, year, journal/conference title, abstract

Round 2
- Keywords, come from round 1, source/research database, number of results returned
- Result (first 20+, with no detailed abstracts)
Title, author, year, journal/conference title
- Review & Summary
what was your opinion read from the list, what consideration led to the new set of keywords
The quality of your view makes essential difference of the quality of the work!! Shall carries at least a paragraph of 6-10 lines
- New Keywords derived
- Detail reading article/work identified-Title, author, year, journal/conference title, abstract→ to be read in the focused reading
A common mistake is that the focused reading article is not from the broad scan identified articles
- Appendix (need to be conducted in round 1 broad scan but to be included at the end of the document, not here) including first 20+ returned search including detailed abstracts
Title, author, year, journal/conference title, abstract

Round 3
- Keywords, come from round 2,source/research database, number of results returned
- Result (first 20+, with no detailed abstracts)
Title, author, year, journal/conference title
- Review & Summary
what was your opinion read from the list, what consideration led to the new set of keywords
The quality of your view makes essential difference of the quality of the work!! Shall carries at least a paragraph of 6-10 lines
- New Keywords derived
- Detail reading article/work identified-Title, author, year, journal/conference title, abstract → to be read in the focused reading

A common mistake is that the focused reading article is not from the broad scan identified articles
- Appendix (need to be conducted in round 1 broad scan but to be included at the end of the document, not here) including first 20+ returned search including detailed abstracts
Title, author, year, journal/conference title, abstract

A1. Round 1 Broad Scan, keyword, source/research database, number of results returned
20+ Title, author, year, journal/conference title
With abstract
A2. Round 2 Broad Scan, keyword, source/research database, number of results returned
20+ Title, author, year, journal/conference title
With abstract
A3. Round 3 Broad Scan, keyword, source/research database, number of results returned
20+ Title, author, year, journal/conference title
With abstract

Appendix B. Chatbot
B1. JSON of the chatbot
B2. Lambda function of the chatbot

Notes on Assignment

Key Objective:
Assignment 2 is to combine
1. A new technology (Alexa chatbot), and
2. A qualitative or quantitative research method

to
(a) propose and
(b) verify through a preliminary study
a research method for the proposed research (continue the work from Assignment 1, particularly the research method part).

The new technology (Alexa chatbot)
has been covered, demonstrated in class and practiced in labs :
1. Create a chatbot with basic lambda functions to acquire slots' values and respond accordingly;
2. Use webhook to link with the web application to manage the interaction between the chatbot and users; this method requires a https web host and a modified voice_wp plugin;

Web Application
Samples and demonstrations have been provided in class, and practiced in lab, for information (database tables) to be managed with web page functions (php code embedded) :
1. Add new records;
2. Update existing records;
3. Show existing records and
4. Delete unwanted records

Common Web Application Sample
Students who have not been able to create a web application and webhooks in labs or assignment can make use of the provide common web application.
- Only students who have seriously attempted the labs or the assignment to build the web application and webhook could find the sample application helpful. Similar to many research outputs, only researchers who have serious explored in the same field could make sense of them.
- The common web application allows Alexa chatbots (sample provided with the bridging lambda function) to report data (a string, e.g. report of sleep quality), retrieve data from web application (a string, e.g. messages or notifications), ask questions (set at web application) and log answers. It can be used to support different designs to collect data for qualitative research or quantitative research.
- Brief readme and source code comments were provided.
- As it is common web application, each record needs to have a owner (student id) and pass to enable updates and retrieval.

Attachment:- Assignment.zip