Towards responsive Sensitive Artificial Listeners

This paper describes work in the recently started project SEMAINE, which aims to build a set of Sensitive Artificial Listeners – conversational agents designed to sustain an interaction with a human user despite limited verbal skills, through robust recognition and generation of non-verbal behaviour in real-time, both when the agent is speaking and listening. We report on data collection and on the design of a system architecture in view of real-time responsiveness

Developing an ontology of mechanisms of action in behaviour change interventions

Background: Behaviour change interventions can influence behaviours central to health and sustainability. To design better interventions, a strong evidence base about ‘why’ interventions work is needed, i.e., their mechanisms of action (MoAs). MoAs are often labelled and defined inconsistently across intervention reports, creating challenges for understanding interventions and synthesising evidence. An ontology can address this problem by providing a classification system that labels and defines classes for MoAs and their relationships. Aims: To develop an ontology of MoAs in behaviour change interventions, and to explore challenges in understanding MoAs and their links to behaviour change techniques (BCTs) Methods: Behavioural scientists’ challenges to understanding MoAs and BCT-MoA links were investigated using a thematic analysis (Study 1 [S1]). To help better understand MoAs, Studies 2-7 developed the MoA Ontology: (S2) Identifying and grouping MoAs from 83 behavioural theories; (S3) Converting the groupings into an ontology by drawing on relevant ontologies; (S4) Restructuring the ontology to be more usable and ontologically correct; (S5) Applying and refining the ontology to code MoAs in 135 intervention reports; (S6) Nine behavioural scientists reviewing the ontology’s comprehensiveness and clarity, informing revisions; (S7) Investigating the inter-rater reliability of researchers double-coding MoAs in reports using the ontology, informing changes to the ontology. Results: Study 1 suggested challenges to understanding broad and underspecified MoAs. To form the basis of a detailed ontology, Study 2 identified 1062 MoAs and formed 104 MoA groups. Building on these groups, Studies 3-7 created the MoA Ontology, which had 261 classes (e.g., ‘belief’) on seven hierarchical levels. Inter-rater reliability was ‘acceptable’ for researchers familiar with the ontology but lower for researchers unfamiliar with the ontology (Study 7). Conclusions: The developed ontology captured MoAs with greater detail than previous classification systems. With its clear class labels and definitions, the ontology provides a controlled vocabulary for MoAs

Knowledge Elicitation Methods for Affect Modelling in Education

Research on the relationship between affect and cognition in Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIEd) brings an important dimension to our understanding of how learning occurs and how it can be facilitated. Emotions are crucial to learning, but their nature, the conditions under which they occur, and their exact impact on learning for different learners in diverse contexts still needs to be mapped out. The study of affect during learning can be challenging, because emotions are subjective, fleeting phenomena that are often difficult for learners to report accurately and for observers to perceive reliably. Context forms an integral part of learners’ affect and the study thereof. This review provides a synthesis of the current knowledge elicitation methods that are used to aid the study of learners’ affect and to inform the design of intelligent technologies for learning. Advantages and disadvantages of the specific methods are discussed along with their respective potential for enhancing research in this area, and issues related to the interpretation of data that emerges as the result of their use. References to related research are also provided together with illustrative examples of where the individual methods have been used in the past. Therefore, this review is intended as a resource for methodological decision making for those who want to study emotions and their antecedents in AIEd contexts, i.e. where the aim is to inform the design and implementation of an intelligent learning environment or to evaluate its use and educational efficacy

The impact of video as a self-reflective tool for improvement of teacher feedback practices

Teacher reflection on instructional practices can improve performance and positively influence student achievement. This qualitative quasi-ethnographic study investigated the impact of self-tracking video technology as a reflective tool for improvement of teacher feedback in a specialist primary classroom. Video provided observational data which was analysed using a checklist and researcher and reviewer annotations. The study concluded that the teacher used non-specific feedback strategies more than specific-feedback to respond to behavioural, engagement and learning issues. Thus, context was identified as an important determinant of effectiveness in feedback. The video technology features enhanced the teacher’s reflection and strengthened the collaborative reflective processes

The impact of video as a self-reflective tool for improvement of teacher feedback practices

Teacher reflection on instructional practices can improve performance and positively influence student achievement. This qualitative quasi-ethnographic study investigated the impact of self-tracking video technology as a reflective tool for improvement of teacher feedback in a specialist primary classroom. Video provided observational data which was analysed using a checklist and researcher and reviewer annotations. The study concluded that the teacher used non-specific feedback strategies more than specific-feedback to respond to behavioural, engagement and learning issues. Thus, context was identified as an important determinant of effectiveness in feedback. The video technology features enhanced the teacher’s reflection and strengthened the collaborative reflective processes

Using natural user interfaces to support synchronous distributed collaborative work

Synchronous Distributed Collaborative Work (SDCW) occurs when group members work together at the same time from different places together to achieve a common goal. Effective SDCW requires good communication, continuous coordination and shared information among group members. SDCW is possible because of groupware, a class of computer software systems that supports group work. Shared-workspace groupware systems are systems that provide a common workspace that aims to replicate aspects of a physical workspace that is shared among group members in a co-located environment. Shared-workspace groupware systems have failed to provide the same degree of coordination and awareness among distributed group members that exists in co-located groups owing to unintuitive interaction techniques that these systems have incorporated. Natural User Interfaces (NUIs) focus on reusing natural human abilities such as touch, speech, gestures and proximity awareness to allow intuitive human-computer interaction. These interaction techniques could provide solutions to the existing issues of groupware systems by breaking down the barrier between people and technology created by the interaction techniques currently utilised. The aim of this research was to investigate how NUI interaction techniques could be used to effectively support SDCW. An architecture for such a shared-workspace groupware system was proposed and a prototype, called GroupAware, was designed and developed based on this architecture. GroupAware allows multiple users from distributed locations to simultaneously view and annotate text documents, and create graphic designs in a shared workspace. Documents are represented as visual objects that can be manipulated through touch gestures. Group coordination and awareness is maintained through document updates via immediate workspace synchronization, user action tracking via user labels and user availability identification via basic proxemic interaction. Members can effectively communicate via audio and video conferencing. A user study was conducted to evaluate GroupAware and determine whether NUI interaction techniques effectively supported SDCW. Ten groups of three members each participated in the study. High levels of performance, user satisfaction and collaboration demonstrated that GroupAware was an effective groupware system that was easy to learn and use, and effectively supported group work in terms of communication, coordination and information sharing. Participants gave highly positive comments about the system that further supported the results. The successful implementation of GroupAware and the positive results obtained from the user evaluation provides evidence that NUI interaction techniques can effectively support SDCW

Teaching English to Young Learners. International TEYL Research Papers : 2016

This 2016 edition of TEYL research papers contains reports on small-scale classroom-based action research undertaken by post-graduate students for completion of their Master of Arts degree in Teaching English to Young Learners, from the University of York. In this edition, four papers are presented, focussing on: the impact of assessment descriptors on 12-14 year-old English language learners’ written work through increased self-awareness undertaken in Portugal (Diana England); teaching active listening skills to 14-16 year-old Spanish learners of English (John Lavery); the value of songs in the classroom to enhance vocabulary retention with very young learners in Greece (Soultana Papaioannou); the use of DARTs (analysis-directed activities related to text) to develop reading comprehension in 12-13 ESL year-old learners in a South-East Asian science classroom (Mark Anthony Steacy). This edition has been compiled and edited by Kate Gregson from the MATEYL supervisory team at the University of York

Classifying multimodal turn management in Danish dyadic first encounters

This paper deals with multimodal turn management in an annotated Danish corpus of video recorded dyadic conversations between young people who meet for the first time. Conversation participants indicate whether they wish to give, take or keep the turn through speech as well as body behaviours. In this study we present an analysis of turn management body behaviours as well as classification experiments run on the annotated data in order to investigate how far it is possible to distinguish between the different types of turn management expressed by body behaviours using their shape and the co-occurring speech expressions. Our study comprises body behaviours which have not been previously investigated with respect to turn management, so that it not only confirms preceding studies on turn management in English but also provides new insight on how speech and body behaviours are used together in communication. The classification experiments indicate that the shape annotations of all kinds of body behaviour together with information about the gesturer’s co-occurring speech are useful to classify turn management types, and that the various behaviours contribute to the expression of turn features in different ways. Thus, knowledge of the different cues used by speakers in face-to-face communication to signal different types of turn shift provides the basis for modelling turn management, which is in turn key to implement natural conversation flow in multimodal dialogue systemspeer-reviewe

AI as a Methodology for Supporting Educational Praxis and Teacher Metacognition

Evidence-based practice (EBP) is of critical importance in education where emphasis is placed on the need to equip educators with an ability to independently generate and reflect on evidence of their practices in situ – a process also known as praxis. This paper examines existing research related to teachers’ metacognitive skills and, using two exemplar projects, it discusses the utility and relevance of AI methods of knowledge representation and knowledge elicitation as methodologies for supporting EBP. Research related to technology-enhanced communities of practice as a means for teachers to share and compare their knowledge with others is also examined. Suggestions for the key considerations in supporting teachers’ metacognition in praxis are made based on the review of literature and discussion of the specific projects, with the aim to highlight potential future research directions for AIEd. A proposal is made that a crucial part of AIEd’s future resides in its curating the role of AI as a methodology for supporting teacher training and continuous professional development, especially as relates to their developing metacognitive skills in relation to their practices