Using a serverless framework for implementing a cognitive tutor: experiences and issues

Abstract

We present a practical application of serverless technology to implement a key component of a personalized tutoring system. We employ OpenWhisk[2] to orchestrate a set of microservices tasked with different responsibilities in the larger system. The tutor, which is trained on a specific set of content, is embodied as a multimodal, stateful dialog system. This desired experience brings with it unique challenges, prime among them being real-time interaction and the inherently stateful nature. We discuss the drivers for selecting serverless technology, the specific design choices we made and the issues we have faced. This work is in progress, and we conclude with some notes on paths we plan to explore as we continue to evolve the system and exploit this exciting new computing paradigm to help us achieve our goals.