Spoken dialogue systems: architectures and applications

171 p.Technology and technological devices have become habitual and omnipresent. Humans need to learn tocommunicate with all kind of devices. Until recently humans needed to learn how the devices expressthemselves to communicate with them. But in recent times the tendency has become to makecommunication with these devices in more intuitive ways. The ideal way to communicate with deviceswould be the natural way of communication between humans, the speech. Humans have long beeninvestigating and designing systems that use this type of communication, giving rise to the so-calledSpoken Dialogue Systems.In this context, the primary goal of the thesis is to show how these systems can be implemented.Additionally, the thesis serves as a review of the state-of-the-art regarding architectures and toolkits.Finally, the thesis is intended to serve future system developers as a guide for their construction. For that

A software based mentor system

This thesis describes the architecture, implementation issues and evaluation of Mentor - an educational support system designed to mentor students in their university studies. Students can ask (by typing) natural language questions and Mentor will use several educational paradigms to present information from its Knowledge Base or from data-mined online Web sites to respond. Typically the questions focus on the student’s assignments or in their preparation for their examinations. Mentor is also pro-active in that it prompts the student with questions such as "Have you started your assignment yet?". If the student responds and enters into a dialogue with Mentor, then, based upon the student’s questions and answers, it guides them through a Directed Learning Path planned by the lecturer, specific to that assessment. The objectives of the research were to determine if such a system could be designed, developed and applied in a large-scale, real-world environment and to determine if the resulting system was beneficial to students using it. The study was significant in that it provided an analysis of the design and implementation of the system as well as a detailed evaluation of its use. This research integrated the Computer Science disciplines of network communication, natural language parsing, user interface design and software agents, together with pedagogies from the Computer Aided Instruction and Intelligent Tutoring System fields of Education. Collectively, these disciplines provide the foundation for the two main thesis research areas of Dialogue Management and Tutorial Dialogue Systems. The development and analysis of the Mentor System required the design and implementation of an easy to use text based interface as well as a hyper- and multi-media graphical user interface, a client-server system, and a dialogue management system based on an extensible kernel. The multi-user Java-based client-server system used Perl-5 Regular Expression pattern matching for Natural Language Parsing along with a state-based Dialogue Manager and a Knowledge Base marked up using the XML-based Virtual Human Markup Language. The kernel was also used in other Dialogue Management applications such as with computer generated Talking Heads. The system also enabled a user to easily program their own knowledge into the Knowledge Base as well as to program new information retrieval or management tasks so that the system could grow with the user. The overall framework to integrate and manage the above components into a usable system employed suitable educational pedagogies that helped in the student’s learning process. The thesis outlines the learning paradigms used in, and summarises the evaluation of, three course-based Case Studies of university students’ perception of the system to see how effective and useful it was, and whether students benefited from using it. This thesis will demonstrate that Mentor met its objectives and was very successful in helping students with their university studies. As one participant indicated: ‘I couldn’t have done without it.

Complexity and creative capacity : reformulating the problem of knowledge transfer in environmental management

The Ningaloo Reef is Australia’s largest fringing coral reef and an iconic tourist destination; however tourism development in Ningaloo has been ad hoc and the area is challenged by human pressure on numerous fronts. In response to these challenges a number of research agencies brought together a range of scientists to study the effects of human interaction on the reef. Moving from research to practice has been understood to depend on the adaptive capacity of the institutions responsible for governing human activities, in this case in the Ningaloo area. Knowledge transfer describes the suite of strategies used to try to bridge the gap between research and management. Knowledge transfer efforts, however, seldom have the desired impact of seeing research applied to decision-making. The ubiquity of knowledge transfer difficulties across disciplines suggests a common root to the problem, based in our shared cultural assumptions. This study pairs a multidisciplinary theoretical investigation with action research to shed light on why knowledge transfer efforts so often fall short in terms of seeing research applied to practice. Recent environmental management perspectives on knowledge transfer illustrate the shift towards stakeholder participation as a means of improving knowledge transfer success. As such, the action research study involved the researcher embedding herself in the Ningaloo community for 18 months, adopting the role of a knowledge broker and engaging and collaborating with modelling researchers and local stakeholders on knowledge transfer efforts. However, despite intensive stakeholder engagement, evaluation interviews at the end of the process indicated that although the knowledge transfer process had the effect of catalysing relationships between stakeholder groups in the region, and between regional stakeholders and scientists, it appeared to have relatively little effect on the representational knowledge of local stakeholders or the actual application of research in practice. This led to the question of whether knowledge transfer is itself is part of the research uptake problem, as per the principles of problem formulation, which specify that resolving seemingly intractable problems requires examining the assumptions that underpin our thinking about the problem situation. On this basis, the theoretical component of this study explored the Newtonian assumptions that inform our understanding of knowledge transfer. An alternative complexity-based ontology is proposed, unifying the metaphysics of materialism and idealism, based on a synthesis of process philosophy, mathematical logic, quantum theory, general systems theory and the complexity sciences. The phenomena of cognition, learning, knowledge and organising are compared in relation to how they’ve been understood within the Newtonian paradigm, and how they are now being explained from the perspective of a complexity-based paradigm. By reframing the action research results from a complexity perspective, the Ningaloo knowledge transfer process does not constitute a failure in terms of enhancing the capacity of the Ningaloo system to make more sustainable decisions. Rather, the increased connectivity between stakeholder groups and scientists can be viewed as more importantly enhancing the creative capacity of Ningaloo’s governance system. It is posited that the research uptake problem should be reformulated from the basis of complexity paradigm, and the notions of knowledge transfer and adaptive capacity reconceptualised accordingly. Instead of devising rational objective arguments for someone else to improve the ‘adaptive capacity’ of human systems, scientists should focus instead on improving their own creative capacity in their local interactions

Beyond e-learning : an intelligent pedagogical agent to guide students in problem-based learning

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A course-oriented intelligent tutoring system with probability assessment

Most Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) in the past have concentrated on small domains and have been topic-oriented. They have tended to be non-extendable prototypes and have neglected the expertise of human teachers. It is argued here that a promising approach at this time is to design course-oriented ITS shells which are based on the human teacher. Courses using such shells could be used to take some of the load of first-time delivery and assessment from teachers and lecturers, and leave them more time for individual tutoring. [Continues.

Towards a multimedia computer assisted careers guidance system for adults with dyslexia.

Dyslexic people face particular problems in employment. These problems, coupled with a lack of specialist support, create a critical need for specially tailored computer assisted careers guidance (CACG) systems. The primary objective of this thesis is to establish guidelines for the design of such a system. Section one examines the possibility of providing training or guidance for dyslexic people via computer, and focuses on the use of symbolic information. The results of Study 1, using British road traffic signs, indicate that dyslexic people are deficient in implicit learning, even for symbolic information. Consequently, despite the advantage of symbol based systems for dyslexics, explicit training in system use is likely to be essential. Section two examines the potential of such systems for delivering specially tailored CACG to dyslexic people. The literature on careers guidance for dyslexic people suggests that they particularly benefit from increased insight into the nature of their disability, and knowledge of its implications. Careers guidance for dyslexics would therefore be optimised by guidance in: the nature of their disabilities; likely effects of their disabilities; implications for careers decisions; and opportunities for overcoming dyslexia-related difficulties. It is argued that multimedia systems, encapsulating an open learning approach, are particularly appropriate for dyslexic people. Modern multimedia computer assisted careers guidance (CACG) systems have the potential to facilitate these beneficial processes, and to provide valuable information and support materials. However, presently available systems of this sort are far from suitable for dyslexics. Unfortunately, little information on multimedia or CACG relates directly to dyslexia. To counter this, three studies were conducted; an interview study of selected dyslexia professionals, a questionnaire study of a wider range of dyslexia professionals, and a questionnaire study of dyslexic adults. Each was designed to establish: how careers guidance for dyslexic people can be improved; the feasibility and desirability of multimedia CACG for dyslexic people; and the design characteristics of such a CACG system. Not only was it generally agreed that such a system is feasible, and desirable, but also strong support was voiced for the central use of video resources. However, it was stressed that the system should not be allowed to replace human guidance. The results of these studies are combined with the conclusions from the literature, to construct a detailed design and description of a multimedia CACG system for dyslexic people

Improving broadcast accessibility for hard of hearing individuals : using object-based audio personalisation and narrative importance

Technological advances in broadcasting can be the impetus for advances in accessibility services. For the 11 million individuals in the United Kingdom with some degree of hearing loss, the advent of object-based broadcasting and it’s personalisation features has the potential to facilitate a transition towards more accessible broadcast audio. Part I of this work conducts a systematic review of previous object-based accessibility research, identifying the personalisation of redundant non-speech objects as a potentially high impact yet unexplored area of research. Guided by these findings, and the results of a survey of end-user needs, the specific research questions of this work are then developed as:- What is the relationship between redundant non-speech audio objects and broadcast speech intelligibility, for normal and hard of hearing listeners? - Can a system be designed which allows end-users to control the balance between audio objects for dramatic content which is simple to use and preserves comprehension? Part II of this work shows that the presence of redundant non-speech sounds improve speech recognition in noise in normal hearing listeners, even when the sound partially masks the speech. Subsequent investigations show that this effect exists within hard of hearing cohorts also, and the benefit yielded by non-speech sounds can be predicted by the severity of hearing loss in an individual's better hearing ear. Part III work translates these novel findings into practical broadcast accessibility technology, through the development of a new conceptual framework called: `Narrative Importance’. Based on this framework, production tools and an end-user interface are developed and deployed in a large scale public trial. The results of this trial demonstrate that this new approach to accessible audio can deliver content which is more enjoyable with reduced energetic masking of speech, whilst still maintaining the creative integrity and comprehension of the content

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse