Modernizing the Integrated Approach: A Dynamic Teaching Method Using Podcasts and Multimedia Content

This project explores ways to create a curriculum in which multimedia and technology such as podcasts, streaming video, and online articles are utilized effectively in order to develop academic skills for adult international students, specifically those with the goal of attending an American university. Through this integrated approach that combines all of the essential language skills (listening, reading, speaking, and writing), students will build confidence and thus become empowered and individualized learners. They will be able to attain mastery of an essential academic skill set that will assist them in attaining their goals in many different realms. This project engages various learning types and activate students’ interest by creating a flexible and individualized curriculum in which students can draw upon their own interests in order to solidify not only academic writing and reading skills similar to those used in a university but also argumentative abilities, critical thinking skills, and content-based knowledge. Moreover, students will be deeply engaged because the content is modern and relevant and the approach is dynamic

Networks of Liveness in Singer-Songwriting: A practice-based enquiry into developing audio-visual interactive systems and creative strategies for composition and performance.

This enquiry explores the creation and use of computer-based, real-time interactive audio-visual systems for the composition and performance of popular music by solo artists. Using a practice-based methodology, research questions are identified that relate to the impact of incorporating interactive systems into the songwriting process and the liveness of the performances with them. Four approaches to the creation of interactive systems are identified: creating explorative-generative tools, multiple tools for guitar/vocal pieces, typing systems and audio-visual metaphors. A portfolio of ten pieces that use these approaches was developed for live performance. A model of the songwriting process is presented that incorporates system-building and strategies are identified for reconciling the indeterminate, electronic audio output of the system with composed popular music features and instrumental/vocal output. The four system approaches and ten pieces are compared in terms of four aspects of liveness, derived from current theories. It was found that, in terms of overall liveness, a unity to system design facilitated both technological and aesthetic connections between the composition, the system processes and the audio and visual outputs. However, there was considerable variation between the four system approaches in terms of the different aspects of liveness. The enquiry concludes by identifying strategies for maximising liveness in the different system approaches and discussing the connections between liveness and the songwriting process

Understanding Collaborative Sensemaking for System Design — An Investigation of Musicians\u27 Practice

There is surprisingly little written in information science and technology literature about the design of tools used to support the collaboration of creators. Understanding collaborative sensemaking through the use of language has been traditionally applied to non-work domains, but this method is also well-suited for informing hypotheses about the design collaborative systems. The presence of ubiquitous, mobile technology, and development of multi-user virtual spaces invites investigation of design which is based on naturalistic, real world, creative group behaviors, including the collaborative work of musicians. This thesis is considering the co-construction of new (musical) knowledge by small groups. Co-construction of new knowledge is critical to the definition of an information system because it emphasizes coordination and resource sharing among group members (versus individual members independently doing their own tasks and only coming together to collate their contributions as a final product). This work situates the locus of creativity on the process itself, rather than on the output (the musical result) or the individuals (members of the band). This thesis describes a way to apply quantitative observations to inform qualitative assessment of the characteristics of collaborative sensemaking in groups. Conversational data were obtained from nine face-to-face collaborative composing sessions, involving three separate bands producing 18 hours of recorded interactions. Topical characteristics of the discussion, namely objects, plans, properties and performance; as well as emergent patterns of generative, evaluative, revision, and management conversational acts within the group were seen as indicative of knowledge construction. The findings report the use of collaborative pathways: iterative cycles of generation, evaluation and revision of temporary solutions used to move the collaboration forward. In addition, bracketing of temporary solutions served to help collaborators reuse content and offload attentional resources. Ambiguity in language, evaluation criteria, goal formation, and group awareness meant that existing knowledge representations were insufficient in making sense of incoming data and necessitated reformulating those representations. Further, strategic use of affective language was found to be instrumental in bridging knowledge gaps. Based on these findings, features of a collaborative system are proposed to help in facilitating sensemaking routines at various stages of a creative task. This research contributes to the theoretical understanding of collaborative sensemaking during non-work, creative activities in order to inform the design of systems for supporting these activities. By studying an environment which forms a potential microcosm of virtual interaction between groups, it provides a framework for understanding and automating collaborative discussion content in terms of the features of dialogue

Measuring musical interaction: analysing communication in embodied musical behaviour

This thesis addresses the ubiquity and necessity of embodied interaction to musical activity, using video analysis to observe communication in musical events. Through the specific study of classical North Indian instrumental duo performance, the thesis examines how processes of social interaction may inform human musical activity, using a combined methodology of ethnographic study and quantitative data analysis of original video-recordings. Proposing a pragmatic approach to the study of the meaningful nature of musical events, the thesis keeps sight of the generative context of the human body in social interaction, and offers a model of musical communication that privileges nonlinguistic, socially co-regulative elements in its account of human musical interaction. The socially meaningful nature of the behaviour-in-time of the musicians included in the study is investigated by means of a novel methodology. This combines the qualitative exploration of emic concepts related to the practice of North Indian classical music with an empirical analysis of video data, based on a cognitive ethological framework. The thesis draws on current notions of embodied cognition and contributes to the growing corpus of musicological literature emphasising the embodied and social nature of musical communication. The results of this exploratory study suggest that both social-interaction and music-structural factors contribute to the organisation of the musicians' communicative behaviours and that, to a certain extent, these organisational factors can be separated in analysis

Real-time generation and adaptation of social companion robot behaviors

Social robots will be part of our future homes. They will assist us in everyday tasks, entertain us, and provide helpful advice. However, the technology still faces challenges that must be overcome to equip the machine with social competencies and make it a socially intelligent and accepted housemate. An essential skill of every social robot is verbal and non-verbal communication. In contrast to voice assistants, smartphones, and smart home technology, which are already part of many people's lives today, social robots have an embodiment that raises expectations towards the machine. Their anthropomorphic or zoomorphic appearance suggests they can communicate naturally with speech, gestures, or facial expressions and understand corresponding human behaviors. In addition, robots also need to consider individual users' preferences: everybody is shaped by their culture, social norms, and life experiences, resulting in different expectations towards communication with a robot. However, robots do not have human intuition - they must be equipped with the corresponding algorithmic solutions to these problems. This thesis investigates the use of reinforcement learning to adapt the robot's verbal and non-verbal communication to the user's needs and preferences. Such non-functional adaptation of the robot's behaviors primarily aims to improve the user experience and the robot's perceived social intelligence. The literature has not yet provided a holistic view of the overall challenge: real-time adaptation requires control over the robot's multimodal behavior generation, an understanding of human feedback, and an algorithmic basis for machine learning. Thus, this thesis develops a conceptual framework for designing real-time non-functional social robot behavior adaptation with reinforcement learning. It provides a higher-level view from the system designer's perspective and guidance from the start to the end. It illustrates the process of modeling, simulating, and evaluating such adaptation processes. Specifically, it guides the integration of human feedback and social signals to equip the machine with social awareness. The conceptual framework is put into practice for several use cases, resulting in technical proofs of concept and research prototypes. They are evaluated in the lab and in in-situ studies. These approaches address typical activities in domestic environments, focussing on the robot's expression of personality, persona, politeness, and humor. Within this scope, the robot adapts its spoken utterances, prosody, and animations based on human explicit or implicit feedback.Soziale Roboter werden Teil unseres zukünftigen Zuhauses sein. Sie werden uns bei alltäglichen Aufgaben unterstützen, uns unterhalten und uns mit hilfreichen Ratschlägen versorgen. Noch gibt es allerdings technische Herausforderungen, die zunächst überwunden werden müssen, um die Maschine mit sozialen Kompetenzen auszustatten und zu einem sozial intelligenten und akzeptierten Mitbewohner zu machen. Eine wesentliche Fähigkeit eines jeden sozialen Roboters ist die verbale und nonverbale Kommunikation. Im Gegensatz zu Sprachassistenten, Smartphones und Smart-Home-Technologien, die bereits heute Teil des Lebens vieler Menschen sind, haben soziale Roboter eine Verkörperung, die Erwartungen an die Maschine weckt. Ihr anthropomorphes oder zoomorphes Aussehen legt nahe, dass sie in der Lage sind, auf natürliche Weise mit Sprache, Gestik oder Mimik zu kommunizieren, aber auch entsprechende menschliche Kommunikation zu verstehen. Darüber hinaus müssen Roboter auch die individuellen Vorlieben der Benutzer berücksichtigen. So ist jeder Mensch von seiner Kultur, sozialen Normen und eigenen Lebenserfahrungen geprägt, was zu unterschiedlichen Erwartungen an die Kommunikation mit einem Roboter führt. Roboter haben jedoch keine menschliche Intuition - sie müssen mit entsprechenden Algorithmen für diese Probleme ausgestattet werden. In dieser Arbeit wird der Einsatz von bestärkendem Lernen untersucht, um die verbale und nonverbale Kommunikation des Roboters an die Bedürfnisse und Vorlieben des Benutzers anzupassen. Eine solche nicht-funktionale Anpassung des Roboterverhaltens zielt in erster Linie darauf ab, das Benutzererlebnis und die wahrgenommene soziale Intelligenz des Roboters zu verbessern. Die Literatur bietet bisher keine ganzheitliche Sicht auf diese Herausforderung: Echtzeitanpassung erfordert die Kontrolle über die multimodale Verhaltenserzeugung des Roboters, ein Verständnis des menschlichen Feedbacks und eine algorithmische Basis für maschinelles Lernen. Daher wird in dieser Arbeit ein konzeptioneller Rahmen für die Gestaltung von nicht-funktionaler Anpassung der Kommunikation sozialer Roboter mit bestärkendem Lernen entwickelt. Er bietet eine übergeordnete Sichtweise aus der Perspektive des Systemdesigners und eine Anleitung vom Anfang bis zum Ende. Er veranschaulicht den Prozess der Modellierung, Simulation und Evaluierung solcher Anpassungsprozesse. Insbesondere wird auf die Integration von menschlichem Feedback und sozialen Signalen eingegangen, um die Maschine mit sozialem Bewusstsein auszustatten. Der konzeptionelle Rahmen wird für mehrere Anwendungsfälle in die Praxis umgesetzt, was zu technischen Konzeptnachweisen und Forschungsprototypen führt, die in Labor- und In-situ-Studien evaluiert werden. Diese Ansätze befassen sich mit typischen Aktivitäten in häuslichen Umgebungen, wobei der Schwerpunkt auf dem Ausdruck der Persönlichkeit, dem Persona, der Höflichkeit und dem Humor des Roboters liegt. In diesem Rahmen passt der Roboter seine Sprache, Prosodie, und Animationen auf Basis expliziten oder impliziten menschlichen Feedbacks an

Relative effectiveness of three diverse instructional conditions on seventh-grade wind band students' expressive musical performance

Thesis (D.M.A.)--Boston UniversityIn this study, the researcher examined the relative effectiveness of three diverse instructional conditions (aural model (AM), concrete musical instruction (CM), and verbal instruction using imagery/metaphor statements (MI)) on seventh-grade wind band students' expressive musical performance. This study was based, in part, on Woody's (2006a) research with adaptations to include developmentally appropriate instructional conditions for seventh-grade wind band students. In the AM condition, the aural model was recorded by an advanced pianist who synthesized elements from both the CM and MI conditions and exaggerated the expressive properties of loudness, tempo, and style/note duration. In the CM instructional condition, the researcher notated musical markings corresponding to the intended emotion on the printed score for three melodies. Finally, in the MI condition, high-quality examples of imagery/metaphor statements were gathered from experienced wind band instructors and the best-rated statement for each melody was utilized. Participants were enrolled in two seventh-grade wind band programs located in Cobb County, Georgia. Sixty randomly sampled, seventh-grade wind band musicians participated in an expressive performance procedure (EPP) consisting of a pretest recording, an instructional condition, and a posttest recording followed by computer analysis of the loudness, tempo and style/note duration expressive properties. Data were analyzed through matched pairs t-tests determining whether the instructional conditions affected statistically significant differences, from pretest to posttest scores (p < .05), on expressive music performance. Data were further analyzed using an ANCOVA and Tukey HSD post-hoc tests to examine statistically significant (p < .05) differences regarding the relative effectiveness of the three instructional conditions. The results of the matched pairs t-tests indicated the AM, CM, and MI instructional conditions affected the mean difference score sets with statistical significance. Furthermore, results suggested the AM and MI conditions were found to be significantly (p < .005) more effective in affecting the mean difference scores sets than the CM condition; however, the AM and MI conditions did not appear to be significantly more effective compared to one another. The analysis provided evidence supporting the notion that diverse instructional conditions may be effective alternatives for teaching expressive performance

Music information modes and their situational relevance among musicians and music students

Musiikkiin liittyvä tietämys ei ole vain sanallista. Muusikon kehonkieltä, musiikin synnyttämää kuulokuvaa, nuotteja ja kirjoituksia musiikista voidaan kaikkia käyttää musiikillisen informaation lähteinä. Koska musiikkiin liittyvät merkkijärjestelmät eivät käänny ongelmattomasti toisiinsa, niillä voi olla erilaisia moodikohtaisia rooleja ja tulkintoja musiikillisessa viestinnässä. Tätä musiikillisen informaation erityispiirrettä ei ole riittävästi huomioitu aikaisemmassa musiikkitiedon hankinnan tutkimuksessa. Vaikka aikaisempi tutkimus osoittaa musiikkiäänitteet ja nuotit muusikoiden ja musiikin opiskelijoiden keskeisiksi tiedontarpeiksi, kysymys siitä miksi eri kohderyhmät tarvitsevat näitä musiikki-informaation moodeja on jäänyt tarkastelematta. Musiikkitiedon hankintaan kohdistuvan tutkimuksen informaatiokäsitettä tulisikin täsmentää. Musiikki-informaation eri moodit tulisi nähdä omina kokonaisuuksina, joilla on moodikohtaisia rooleja ja tulkintoja tiedonhankinnassa. Tämä väitöstutkimus tarkastelee eri abstraktiotasoisten musiikki-informaation moodien tilannerelevanssia tiedonhankinnassa. Tutkimuksen ensimmäisessä vaiheessa kehitettiin musiikki-informaation typologia, joka määrittelee musiikkitiedon hankinnan empiirisen tarkastelun kannalta relevantit musiikkiinformaation moodit. Musiikki-informaatiotypologian toimivuutta testattiin tarkastelemalla miten määritellyt moodit ovat läsnä ammattisäveltäjän kuvauksessa omasta sävellysprosessistaan. Toisessa empiirisessä tutkimuksessa analysoitiin esittävän säveltaiteen tohtoriopiskelijoiden havaintoja musiikki-informaatiomoodien tilannerelevanssista. Kolmannessa empiirisessä tutkimuksessa tarkasteltiin, miten esittävän säveltaiteen tohtoriopiskelijat ja musiikkikasvatuksen ja musiikin teorian ja sävellyksen maisteriopiskelijat artikuloivat musiikki-informaatiomoodien tilannerelevanssin tehtäväperustaisen tiedonhankinnan eri vaiheissa. Väitöstutkimuksen tulokset lisäävät ymmärrystämme eri informaatiomoodien rooleista musiikkitiedon hankinnassa ja osoittavat että musiikki-informaation eri abstraktiotasojen huomiointi mahdollistaa aikaisempaa tarkemmat kuvaukset erilaisten kohderyhmien musiikkitiedon hankinnastaWithin the domain of music, knowledge resides not merely in written language, but also in diverse modes of information. Sources of music information may include the gestural language of music making, audible experiences of music, music notation and writings about music. The literature of musicology and musical semiotics suggests that different modes of music information may have roles and interpretations of their own and that it should not be assumed that a direct translation between them exists. As prior studies of musicians’ and music students’ information seeking often draw from humanist studies in general, they have not paid due attention to the modes of music information. Although music recordings and notation have been identified as information need types in prior studies of musicians and music students, the question of why these needs occur has not been examined so far. Thus, there is a need to elaborate on approaches to music information used in studies of musicrelated information seeking. Different music information modes should be defined as information types in their own right and subject to varying roles and interpretations in information seeking. This dissertation research is pioneering in its examination of the situational relevance of music information modes representing music information at varying levels of abstraction. The research began with the development of a typology specifying the modes of music information relevant to the empirical analysis of music-related information seeking. The typology’s accuracy and sufficiency were first examined empirically in a qualitative study focusing on how its information modes were reflected in a verbal description of the compositional process. The second empirical study examined how the situational relevance of the information modes was articulated by Doctor of Music students focusing on music performance. Finally, the third empirical study examined how the information modes were viewed as situationally relevant at different stages of information-seeking processes among Doctor of Music students focusing on music performance and master’s students representing music education and music theory and analysis. The findings of this dissertation research deepen our understanding of the role of varying music information types in information seeking for musical tasks. They suggest that approaching music information through its many layers provides more accurate descriptions of music-related information-seeking processes

Video Abstracting at a Semantical Level

One the most common form of a video abstract is the movie trailer. Contemporary movie trailers share a common structure across genres which allows for an automatic generation and also reflects the corresponding moviea s composition. In this thesis a system for the automatic generation of trailers is presented. In addition to action trailers, the system is able to deal with further genres such as Horror and comedy trailers, which were first manually analyzed in order to identify their basic structures. To simplify the modeling of trailers and the abstract generation itself a new video abstracting application was developed. This application is capable of performing all steps of the abstract generation automatically and allows for previews and manual optimizations. Based on this system, new abstracting models for horror and comedy trailers were created and the corresponding trailers have been automatically generated using the new abstracting models. In an evaluation the automatic trailers were compared to the original Trailers and showed a similar structure. However, the automatically generated trailers still do not exhibit the full perfection of the Hollywood originals as they lack intentional storylines across shots