Evaluating Relevance Feedback: An Image Retrieval Interface for Children

Studies on information retrieval for children are not yet\ud common. As young children possess a limited vocabulary\ud and limited intellectual power, they may experience more\ud difficulty in fulfilling their information need than adults.\ud This paper presents an image retrieval user interface that\ud is specifically designed for children. The interface uses relevance feedback and has been evaluated by letting children\ud perform different search tasks. The tasks were performed\ud using two interfaces; a more traditional interface - acting as a control interface - and the relevance feedback interface. \ud One of the remarkable results of this study is that children\ud did not favor relevance feedback controls over traditional\ud navigational controls

A semantic-based platform for the digital analysis of architectural heritage

This essay focuses on the fields of architectural documentation and digital representation. We present a research paper concerning the development of an information system at the scale of architecture, taking into account the relationships that can be established between the representation of buildings (shape, dimension, state of conservation, hypothetical restitution) and heterogeneous information about various fields (such as the technical, the documentary or still the historical one). The proposed approach aims to organize multiple representations (and associated information) around a semantic description model with the goal of defining a system for the multi-field analysis of buildings

Searching for Methodology: Feminist Relational Materialism and the Teacher-Student Writing Conference

Using feminist relational materialism as a theoretical map, this paper seeks to reimage traditional case study methodology through the use of diffractive methodology. Reading and writing data diffractively is to refuse to privilege teacher and student talk and to instead study how material-discursive practices intra-act as phenomenon. To do this, we developed question-sets based upon Barad’s (2007) work to interrupt our habits of thinking in regard to a teacher-student writing conference. These question sets provoke our thinking with data from fourth grade teacher-student writing conferences. We play with diffractive methodology highlighting one teacher-student writing conference as intra-activity. Experiencing the teacher-student writing conference again (and again) the question-sets diffract a response and a response diffracts the question-sets, calling us to a continuous becoming, an ethical consideration of how our research and teaching practices matter. We are left wondering if there is a methodology to search for or if methodology is an invitation to an ongoing performance, to join a dance of-the-world, in a constant making and re-making and wondering of what might be

Unsettling Stereotypes: Approaches to the French Culture and Society Course

Beginning with popular commentary on the 2013 Taubira Affair, this article aims to unsettle some common assumptions about “French identity.” More generally, it asks how best to approach the notion of culture in upperdivision culture and society courses. Drawing on recent debates in anthropology, it suggests an approach that moves away from an understanding of culture as a bound entity that promotes a common sense of orientation and purpose toward one where culture is viewed as a reservoir of references, whose meanings and values are continuously interpreted, negotiated, and contested

Redefining Diaspora through a Phenomenology of Postmemory

This article seeks to intervene in the debates about the definition of diaspora by attending to the way in which it is a phenomenon, rooted in a particular kind of experience and consciousness. This approach seeks to move beyond ontological definitions based on categorical criteria toward a more phenomenological definition that can help us better understand the lived experience of diasporic subjects and the formation of diasporic communities. While these groups do not exist as entities that have some common essence or nature, I insist that they do exist phenomonologically. Rather than an objective, prescriptive definition of diaspora, this essay explores the subjective, descriptive quality of diaspora when approached from the inside, as an experience. A phenomenological approach, therefore, can rescue the term diaspora from its overextensions and case-specific limitations. A key consideration will be the role of memory in creating the phenomenon of diaspora. Diaspora must be understood as a phenomenon that emerges when displaced subjects who experience the loss of an "origin" (whether literal or symbolic) perpetuate identifications associated with those places of origin in subsequent generations through the mechanisms of postmemory

Eye-tracking analysis in landscape perception research : influence of photograph properties and landscape characteristics

The European Landscape Convention emphasises the need for public participation in landscape planning and management. This demands understanding of how people perceive and observe landscapes. This can objectively be measured using eye tracking, a system recording eye movements and fixations while observing images. In this study, 23 participants were asked to observe 90 landscape photographs, representing 18 landscape character types in Flanders (Belgium) differing in degree of openness and heterogeneity. For each landscape, five types of photographs were shown, varying in view angle. This experiment design allowed testing the effect of the landscape characteristics and photograph types on the observation pattern, measured by Eye-tracking Metrics (ETM). The results show that panoramic and detail photographs are observed differently than the other types. The degree of openness and heterogeneity also seems to exert a significant influence on the observation of the landscape

Searching for a feminist voice: Film festivals and negotiating the tension between expectation and intent

International Film Festivals play a vital role in shaping filmmakers’ careers. This paper presents some initial findings from a current major research project, highlighting the significance of particular festival programming of emerging female directors from developing nations. Some filmmakers showcased at festivals actively privilege the voices of women in their films as a means of commenting on pressing cultural and political issues. Ironically, other filmmakers do not subscribe to the label of “feminist” or “woman filmmaker”, even if their respective films represent a strongly coded woman’s point of view. Tensions also arise inevitably when scrutinising women filmmakers from developing nations within a first world film festival context. The expectations of the researcher, the festival, film critics and audiences inevitably must negotiate with the original intentions of the filmmaker. This paper explores the significance of women filmmakers in attendance at the Brisbane International Film Festival (2009) and the International Film Festival Rotterdam (2010)

Digital library access for illiterate users

The problems that illiteracy poses in accessing information are gaining attention from the research community. Issues currently being explored include developing an understanding of the barriers to information acquisition experienced by different groups of illiterate information seekers; creating technology, such as software interfaces, that support illiterate users effectively; and tailoring content to increase its accessibility. We have taken a formative evaluation approach to developing and evaluating a digital library interface for illiterate users. We discuss modifications to the Greenstone platform, describe user studies and outline resulting design implications

Spot the Difference! Visual plagiarism in the visual arts.

Over recent years there has been considerable investment in the use of technology to identify sources of text-based plagiarism in universities. However, students of the visual arts are also required to complete numerous pieces of visual submissions for assessment, and yet very little similar work has been undertaken in the area of non-text based plagiarism detection. The Spot the Difference! project (2011-2012), funded by JISC and led by the University for the Creative Arts, seeks to address this gap by piloting the use of visual search tools developed by the University of Surrey and testing their application to support learning and teaching in the arts and specifically to the identification of visual plagiarism. Given that most commonly used search technologies rely on text, the identification and evidencing of visual plagiarism is often left to the knowledge and experience of academic staff, which can potentially result in inconsistency of detection, approach, policies and practices. This paper outlines the work of the project team, who sought to investigate the nature, scope and extent of visual plagiarism in the arts education sector