Virtual Teacher-Aided Learning System Based on Voice Operated Character Animation

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

1) To start with, it is an interesting interdisciplinary paper, focused on emotion recognition, AI, virtual assistants, etc.

2) What does the VOCA acronym stand for? Is it a given name or an abbreviation? Authors should clearly indicate it.

3) In the Authors and Affiliation section provide necessary information regarding each institution. Words like [of] or [and] should not be written using Capital letters.

4) Citations - insert them in a braket [1], etc.

5) Do not divide a table and its caption among 2 different pages.

6) Consider inserting all figures in higher resolution, so that the lines and fonts look sharp.

7) How was this interactive assistant prepared - what kind of simulation environment, programming language, etc., did it include? Provide at least principle technical info and specs.

8) Fig. 9 is basicly a table, and should be presented as one.

9) The Conclusions section is far too short and not convincing at all. It lacks an adequate summary of carried out works. Moreover, it should discuss future works and possibilities of updating your Virtual Assistant.

10) What was the utilized format of used audio signals? What about their parameters, etc.?

11) The Related Works section is far to short to be a standalone chapter/section. Do extend it and look for additional papers focused on the aforementioned topic.

12) There are several minor editorial and formatting issues, therefore a careful throughout examination would seem necessary.

13) How was your virtual teacher trained, what were the utilized datasets and learning models?

14) The list of cited references is not properly and uniformly formatted, it requires adjustments.

15) All equations should be enumerated and mentioned in text. Mathematical symbols should be adequately described.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The language is generally clear and understandable, but it could be made better.

Author Response

Comments 1:

To start with, it is an interesting interdisciplinary paper, focused on emotion recognition, AI, virtual assistants, etc.

Response 1:

Thank you for your comment and encouragement.

Comments 2:

What does the VOCA acronym stand for? Is it a given name or an abbreviation? Authors should clearly indicate it.

Response 2:

Thanks for your insightful comments. Therefore, we add the specific meaning of VOCA in the abstract so that readers can better understand it. These modifications are in the abstract section on page 1 of the revised manuscript.

Comments 3:

In the Authors and Affiliation section provide necessary information regarding each institution. Words like [of] or [and] should not be written using Capital letters.

Response 3: 

We appreciate your valuable feedback. In response, we provide the necessary information about each institution in the Authors and Collaborating units section, changing words like [of] or [and] to use lowercase letters.

Comments 4:

Citations - insert them in a braket [1], etc.

Response 4:

Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore, we have inserted the reference in a [ ].

Comments 5:

Do not divide a table and its caption among 2 different pages.

Response 5: 

Thank you for your advice not to separate a table and its title on two different pages. We have carefully considered your feedback and we have put the tables on pages 3 and 10 of the revised manuscript on the same page with their respective titles.

Comments 6:

Consider inserting all figures in higher resolution, so that the lines and fonts look sharp.

Response 6:

We would like to thank the reviewers for their careful review and valuable suggestions on our paper. We have noted the issue of graphics resolution, inserting all graphics into the paper at a higher resolution to ensure clarity of lines and fonts.

Comments 7:

How was this interactive assistant prepared - what kind of simulation environment, programming language, etc., did it include? Provide at least principle technical info and specs.

Response 7: 

We appreciate your valuable feedback. In response, we have added the runtime environment and programming language for the virtual teacher of this paper, and these modifications have been incorporated into the system presentation section on pages 11 and 12, lines 401-417. By including these, it is intended to provide a more comprehensive introduction to our work.

Comments 8:

Fig. 9 is basicly a table, and should be presented as one.

Response 8:

We appreciate your valuable feedback that Figure 9 should be presented in tabular form. In response, we present Figure 9 as Table 2 on page 10.

Comments 9:

The Conclusions section is far too short and not convincing at all. It lacks an adequate summary of carried out works. Moreover, it should discuss future works and possibilities of updating your Virtual Assistant.

Response 9: 

We thank you for your valuable feedback on the concluding section of the paper. In response, we have expanded the conclusion to include a full summary of the work that has been undertaken and possibilities for future virtual teacher updates, and these changes have been incorporated into the summary sections on pages 12 and 13.

Comments 10:

What was the utilized format of used audio signals? What about their parameters, etc.?

Response 10:

Thanks for your constructive feedback. In response, we included an introduction to audio signals in the model introduction on page 9 of the revised manuscript.

Comments 11:

The Related Works section is far to short to be a standalone chapter/section. Do extend it and look for additional papers focused on the aforementioned topic.

Response 11: 

Thank you for pointing this out. I agree with your comments about related work. Therefore, I revised the manuscript to include an introduction and contrast to the contents of the tables. These changes have been incorporated into Section 2.2 on page 3 of the revised manuscript.

Thank you again for your valuable feedback.

Comments 12:

There are several minor editorial and formatting issues, therefore a careful throughout examination would seem necessary.

Response 12:

We thank the reviewers for pointing out editorial and formatting details. We performed a thorough review and correction of the paper to address all these issues and ensure that the manuscript met the standards of the journal. Thank you again for your valuable feedback.

Comments 13:

How was your virtual teacher trained, what were the utilized datasets and learning models?

Response 13: 

Thank you for your constructive comments. We modified the model training section so that we could clearly present how we trained the virtual teacher. These modifications can be found on pages 10 and 11 of the revised manuscript. We include an introduction to the dataset and implementation details on the model.

Comments 14:

The list of cited references is not properly and uniformly formatted, it requires adjustments.

Response 14:

We thank the reviewers for pointing out problems with the format of the references. We have conducted a thorough review of the reference list and ensured that it is uniform and adjusted in accordance with the format requirements of the journal. We fix all inconsistencies in the revised edition to ensure that the format of the references meets the standards of the journal.

Comments 15:

All equations should be enumerated and mentioned in text. Mathematical symbols should be adequately described.

Response 15: 

Thanks for your constructive feedback. I agree that all equations should be enumerated and mentioned in the text and that mathematical notation should be fully described. In response to your comments, I revised the model training section to provide a clearer model training process. Specifically, on page 15, lines 376-384, I describe in detail the meaning of the formulas and mathematical symbols.

Thanks again for your insightful suggestions.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors have presented a virtual teacher-aided learning system based on voice-operated character animation (VOCA).  The authors have presented rigorous work. However, the paper needs a lot of improvements. Here are some comments.

(a)  The referencing style used in the paper is not professionally done. For example, Section 1, line 3 ".......virtual teachers solves this pain point problem1". I think it must be written as " .......virtual teachers solves this pain point problem [1]."  The authors are requested to fix all other references too. 

(b) Page 8, line 241, the authors referred to Fig. 4-6 and 4-7. These figure numbers do not exist in the paper. 

(c) The authors presented some related works in Section 2 (page 2). The authors presented a comparison table too (see Table 1).  How does their current work differ from these related works? The authors did not highlight their main contributions in the paper. They are requested to list their contribution at the end of the Section 2 mentioning their contributions compared to other related works mentioned in Table 1. 

(d)  The authors' main contributions are presented in Fig. 1, Fig. 2, Fig. 3. and Fig. 4.  These figures need more explanation. The authors have briefly explained these figures. 

(e)  The authors have mentioned many applications: IFlytek, appID, apiKey, iflyfly, Cemotion etc.  The authors can provide a list and explanation of these applications in a separate section titled " Materials and Methods". They must clearly mention the contribution of each application to implement the project.

(f) The authors must follow the Applied Sciences template to list the references. The references need a lot of improvement. 

 

Author Response

Comments 1:

The referencing style used in the paper is not professionally done. For example, Section 1, line 3 ".......virtual teachers solves this pain point problem1". I think it must be written as " .......virtual teachers solves this pain point problem [1]."  The authors are requested to fix all other references too.

Response 1:

Thanks for your constructive feedback. I agree that the citation style used in the paper is not professional and we have revised all citations in the paper as required.

Thanks again for your insightful suggestions.

Comments 2:

Page 8, line 241, the authors referred to Fig. 4-6 and 4-7. These figure numbers do not exist in the paper.

Response 2: 

We would like to thank the reviewers for their careful review and valuable suggestions on our paper. We have changed Fig. 4-6 and 4-7 in the paper to Fig. 8 and Table 2, which can be found on line 340 on page 9 of the revised manuscript.

Comments 3:

The authors presented some related works in Section 2 (page 2). The authors presented a comparison table too (see Table 1).  How does their current work differ from these related works? The authors did not highlight their main contributions in the paper. They are requested to list their contribution at the end of the Section 2 mentioning their contributions compared to other related works mentioned in Table 1.

Response 3:

Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore, We list the contributions of these works later in Table 1 and make a comparison with other related works mentioned in Table 1. The details can be found in lines 105-134 on page 3 of the revised manuscript.

Comments 4:

The authors' main contributions are presented in Fig. 1, Fig. 2, Fig. 3. and Fig. 4.  These figures need more explanation. The authors have briefly explained these figures.  

Response 4:  

Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore, We explain Figure 1, Figure 2, Figure 3, and Figure 4 in more detail in lines 145 to 148 on page 4, 154 to 158 on page 4, 152 to 177 on page 5, and 270 to 281 on page 8, respectively, in the revised manuscript.

Comments 5:  

The authors have mentioned many applications: IFlytek, appID, apiKey, iflyfly, Cemotion etc.  The authors can provide a list and explanation of these applications in a separate section titled " Materials and Methods". They must clearly mention the contribution of each application to implement the project.

Response 5:

Thank you for your valuable comments during the review process. We have included Materials and methods sections on pages 5, 6 and 7 of the revised manuscript, providing detailed explanations of the applications appearing in the text and contributions to the implementation of the project.

Comments 6:

The authors must follow the Applied Sciences template to list the references. The references need a lot of improvement.

Response 6:

We thank the reviewers for their review and feedback on our paper. We note that the reference format needs to conform to the template requirements of the journal. We will carefully follow the journal's reference format template and make comprehensive improvements and adjustments to the reference list to ensure compliance with the journal's standards.We will update the format of all references in the revised edition to ensure that they meet the requirements of the journal. Thank you for pointing this out.

Thank you again for your valuable advice and patient guidance.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors have implemented all the comments mentioned in the review report. The paper quality is much better now compared to the previous version.  The reviewer has no other comments. Many thanks to the authors for their contributions.