The Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence

This paper examined the effects of different facilitation methods in online discussion and showed the possibilities and challenges of automated facilitation. Using an online discussion support system "D-Agree'', we conducted a discussion experiment to compare discussion activities of groups with automated facilitation based on Issue-Based Information System (IBIS) structure, groups with human facilitation, and groups without facilitation. The topic was "surrender of driving license of the elderly people''. The results showed that both automated facilitation and human facilitation seemed to activate the discussion. However, a qualitative evaluation revealed that automated facilitation posted more inappropriate comments than human facilitation, and that facilitation posts, regardless of the methods, were often not responded by participants although the factors behind it were not clearly identified by the data of this experiment.