Multimedia search without visual analysis: the value of linguistic and contextual information

This paper addresses the focus of this special issue by analyzing the potential contribution of linguistic content and other non-image aspects to the processing of audiovisual data. It summarizes the various ways in which linguistic content analysis contributes to enhancing the semantic annotation of multimedia content, and, as a consequence, to improving the effectiveness of conceptual media access tools. A number of techniques are presented, including the time-alignment of textual resources, audio and speech processing, content reduction and reasoning tools, and the exploitation of surface features

Innovation through the flipped model of learning: enriching students' and instructors' experience

The paper provides a brief literature review of the FML, a description of the FML experience within the context of a multi-year project in a major research university – from designing to producing and integrating it into the second-language writing curriculum – and recommendations for scalable implementation. Special attention is given to the benefits of this approach for students as well as to its broader pedagogical advantages.Published versio

Transactional Distances In An Online Histology Laboratory Course

This dissertation examined the transactional distances that exist in an online histology laboratory course assessed through student interactions with the course content, instructors and fellow students. The interactions in the online course were compared to those in a face to face (F2F) course covering the same content. The student-content interactions were assessed through student course outcomes and lecture attendance. Results showed there were no differences in student performance on assessments between the course formats; however, overall student attendance levels were significantly greater in the online course. These results suggest that online students spent more time interacting with course content. It was also shown that there was a direct relationship between lecture attendance and course performance for both online and F2F students. With higher overall attendance rates and a correlation between lecture attendance and course performance, it would be expected that online students would have higher course outcomes compared to the F2F students. The fact that there were no differences in student outcomes suggests that some transactional distance still exists between online students and course content. Student-instructor interactions were examined through an assessment of student questions during the laboratory sessions. Results indicated that the transactional distance between the online students and instructor was lower than that with the F2F students with online students asking questions at higher rates. However, while technology allowed students to communicate synchronously with the instructor, online attendance patterns showed that students preferred to view archive recordings of the lectures, thus maintaining some transactional distance in the online course. The incorporation of synchronous peer teaching to the laboratories was an attempt to increase student-student interactions. Improved laboratory outcomes for both online and F2F students were shown; however, the impact was greater with the online students possibly due to the fact that F2F students were already engaging in informal peer teaching. Due to low survey response rates, it was not possible to show differences in the student’s perceived impact of peer teaching on group dynamics. While technology has improved the transactional distances in online courses, some transactional distances are maintained, often by student choice which is also enabled through technology

Socio-technical lifelogging: deriving design principles for a future proof digital past

Lifelogging is a technically inspired approach that attempts to address the problem of human forgetting by developing systems that ‘record everything’. Uptake of lifelogging systems has generally been disappointing, however. One reason for this lack of uptake is the absence of design principles for developing digital systems to support memory. Synthesising multiple studies, we identify and evaluate 4 new empirically motivated design principles for lifelogging: Selectivity, Embodiment, Synergy and Reminiscence. We first summarise 4 empirical studies that motivate the principles, then describe the evaluation of 4 novel systems built to embody these principles. The design principles were generative, leading to the development of new classes of lifelogging system, as well as providing strategic guidance about how those systems should be built. Evaluations suggest support for Selection and Embodiment principles, but more conceptual and technical work is needed to refine the Synergy and Reminiscence principles

The Pisa Audio-visual Corpus Project: A multimodal approach to ESP research and teaching

This paper presents an ongoing project sponsored by the University of Pisa Language Centre to compile an audiovisual corpus of specialized types of discourse of particular relevance to ESP learners in higher education. The first phase of the project focuses on collecting digitally available video clips that encode specialized language in a range of genres along an ‘authentic’ to ‘fictional’ continuum. The video clips will be analyzed from a multimodal perspective to determine how various semiotic resources work together to construct meaning. They will then be utilized in the ESP classroom to increase learners’ awareness of the key contribution of different modes in specialized communication. We present some exploratory multimodal analyses performed on video clips that encode instances of political discourse across two different genres on the extreme poles of the continuum: a fictional political drama film and an authentic political science lecture

Discussing international perspectives on Open Learning in Brazil: educational politics and pedagogical principles

This paper aims to present some of the new tendencies in Open Learning in the context of international online higher education. These tendencies work as a basis for a discussion of the role of e-learning in online higher education in Brazil. The use of open source technologies and the constant search for quality and innovative pedagogies in the teaching and learning process constitute a new trend in international distance education. The main concern nowadays seems to be with ‘quality’ and ‘widening participation’, which result in initiatives such as ‘Open Educational Resources’. In Brazil, the creation of the Brazilian Open University (UAB) would appear to be consistent with these tendencies. The challenge now is to be able to set up a system that attends to national needs while being open to international tendencies. This paper aims to explore some of these issues, and also to present the most recent freeware technologies used for the purpose of enhancing open learning initiatives

Examining the contributions of automatic speech transcriptions and metadata sources for searching spontaneous conversational speech

The searching spontaneous speech can be enhanced by combining automatic speech transcriptions with semantically related metadata. An important question is what can be expected from search of such transcriptions and different sources of related metadata in terms of retrieval effectiveness. The Cross-Language Speech Retrieval (CL-SR) track at recent CLEF workshops provides a spontaneous speech test collection with manual and automatically derived metadata fields. Using this collection we investigate the comparative search effectiveness of individual fields comprising automated transcriptions and the available metadata. A further important question is how transcriptions and metadata should be combined for the greatest benefit to search accuracy. We compare simple field merging of individual fields with the extended BM25 model for weighted field combination (BM25F). Results indicate that BM25F can produce improved search accuracy, but that it is currently important to set its parameters suitably using a suitable training set