60,597 research outputs found
To what extent could Business Process Management Suite (BPMS) contribute positively to e-learning?
The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effectiveness of Business Process Management Suite (BPMS) as a teaching-learning technology with the lens of the conversational framework (Laurillard 2002). The paper hopes to link commercial technological development with research in teaching-learning technologies and bring about better collaboration between the two. This theoretical evaluation aims to address the preliminary question - could educational communities adopt BPMS, a tool that has evolved from the commercial world to further enhance teaching-learning process? The scope of this paper and its evaluative study will be limited to using the conversational framework. The paper will briefly discuss BPMS and its relation to business process and business process management to provide a brief introduction. The main section of this paper will be a detailed analysis of key BPMS components against the conversational framework. The conclusion will provide a summary of the effectiveness of BPMS as a teaching-learning tool based on the requirements set out by the conversational framework. The results of the conclusion could lead to further empirical research on BPMS as a teaching-learning technology tool and may be the opportunity to request funding to carry out a proof of concept
Conversational Sensing
Recent developments in sensing technologies, mobile devices and context-aware
user interfaces have made it possible to represent information fusion and
situational awareness as a conversational process among actors - human and
machine agents - at or near the tactical edges of a network. Motivated by use
cases in the domain of security, policing and emergency response, this paper
presents an approach to information collection, fusion and sense-making based
on the use of natural language (NL) and controlled natural language (CNL) to
support richer forms of human-machine interaction. The approach uses a
conversational protocol to facilitate a flow of collaborative messages from NL
to CNL and back again in support of interactions such as: turning eyewitness
reports from human observers into actionable information (from both trained and
untrained sources); fusing information from humans and physical sensors (with
associated quality metadata); and assisting human analysts to make the best use
of available sensing assets in an area of interest (governed by management and
security policies). CNL is used as a common formal knowledge representation for
both machine and human agents to support reasoning, semantic information fusion
and generation of rationale for inferences, in ways that remain transparent to
human users. Examples are provided of various alternative styles for user
feedback, including NL, CNL and graphical feedback. A pilot experiment with
human subjects shows that a prototype conversational agent is able to gather
usable CNL information from untrained human subjects
Podcasts as a conversational pedagogy
The use of technology such as podcasts, social networking sites, wikis, and Google docs for communicating information which supports teaching and learning in tertiary institutions is well documented (Bates, 2005). These tools have been shown to enhance traditional lectures and tutorials (Salmon, 2007). Little attention, however, has been given to the use of conversational approaches when using these tools and their potential in developing alternative pedagogical approaches to teaching. This article examines the use of a conversational style podcast in an online pre-service early childhood teacher education programme. The podcasts were initially used to disseminate information and respond to the students’ needs, however, their conversational use revealed a number of unexpected outcomes. Analysis of the podcast conversations that occurred between the two lecturers, and the student feedback to these, were used to identify unexpected outcomes for students enrolled in the programme. These included the ‘humanising’ of the e-learning environment and the sense of community that emerged. This paper argues that the affordance of conversational podcasts personalises the e-learning environment, enhances students’ and lecturers’ motivation, and engenders a greater connectedness with the university context
Getting to the Core of Role: Defining Interpreters' Role Space
This article describes a new model of interpreted interactions that will help students as well as experienced
practitioners define and delineate the decisions that they make. By understanding the dimensions that comprise the
concept we call role, interpreters can more effectively allow participants to have successful communicative interactions
- …