Evolutionary Subject Tagging in the Humanities; Supporting Discovery and Examination in Digital Cultural Landscapes

In this paper, the authors attempt to identify problematic issues for subject tagging in the humanities, particularly those associated with information objects in digital formats. In the third major section, the authors identify a number of assumptions that lie behind the current practice of subject classification that we think should be challenged. We move then to propose features of classification systems that could increase their effectiveness. These emerged as recurrent themes in many of the conversations with scholars, consultants, and colleagues. Finally, we suggest next steps that we believe will help scholars and librarians develop better subject classification systems to support research in the humanities.NEH Office of Digital Humanities: Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant (HD-51166-10

Evolutionary Subject Tagging in the Humanities

Interdisciplinary research in the humanities requires indexing that represents multiple disciplinary perspectives. Most literature has been indexed using traditional models for subject analysis that are either too broad to be helpful or represent a single disciplinary perspective. We question whether traditional print models of subject analysis serve humanistic researchers' needs in working with digital content. It is beyond the capacity of libraries to re-index this body of literature relying on human indexers. We need to develop scalable tools to both re-index extant bodies of literature and newly created literature. Web-scale searching, computational text analysis, and automated indexing each hold promise for addressing various aspects of the problem, but none seem to fully address the problem. This project will gather a group of scholars with expertise in the humanities, computational analysis of texts, and library and information science, to design an approach to the problem

Teaching as Analogous Personalization: A pragmatic inquiry into expert teachers' process for fostering synchrony in educational dialogs, in post-secondary writing

Descriptive understandings of what human learning is, and so normative expectations of what teachers can and should do as educational leaders, has shifted greatly in society over the past century. The learning metaphors have moved from mechanical transfer to organic transformation; the educational approaches have moved from behavioral response-training to social-emotional facilitating: encouraging students not merely to repeat experts but to think like members in those knowledge-based communities, not merely to mimic disciplines' methods but to participate personally in the ongoing discourse of those fields. In an immediate sense, this shift is progress. Yet, in a larger sense, it is merely cycling back to acknowledge an old and persistent thread of practical wisdom among educators: that people learn complexly as emotional-social-intellectual creatures, and so that a teacher's work is to entice interest and effort, to foster a sense of belonging and trust, and to persuade students toward personally connecting with and valuing those same integral parts of a subject-matter that the teacher has already beneficially personalized for themselves. This longstanding rhetorical and pragmatic view of a teacher's educational role is now being supported directly by empirical research that shows the sense-bound, neurologically integrated, socially attuned, identity-and-meaning motivated character of human feelings, thoughts, and dispositions. I introduce the term “analogous personalization” to capture this synthetic (experience-based, scientifically supported) understanding of teaching as complexly social-emotional, intellectual, persuasive work. I then focus on educational dialogs—specifically within post-secondary writing-based courses—as a means of exploring how expert teachers foster synchrony between their own and their students' personal connections to (i.e., emotional inclination toward, social affiliation with, intellectual/practical understanding of) subject-matter. First, this dissertation offers a synthetic overview of some emergent mind-brain-body findings, and points out the fundamental educational realities that those findings substantiate. On that foundation, it next overviews insights from the field of rhetoric-and-writing about how teachers can usefully conceptualize the learner-knowledge-environment relationship from a dialogic perspective, to achieve effective (intentional, situated, synchronous) educational exchanges. Building from those scientific and practical literatures, it offers a flexible research method for studying the pragmatic arc of an educational exchange (from teacher intention to student take-away): by using the teacher's own personal, practical, principled framework of educational ideals and approaches; comparing their stated intentions with students' stated learning experiences, and tracing the arc of that educational dialog through actual classroom recordings. Finally, it enlists this radically situated research method to analyze three expert university writing teachers' practices: their idiosyncratic understandings of a teacher's role (from their own perspective); their experience-based manner of forming learning-centered relationships with students (from my observing perspective); and their apparent, persuasive self-investment in the course's subject-matter and the students' learning (from students' perspectives). It concludes with observations about the role of a teacher's sincerity (both practiced and perceived) in developing professional expertise and achieving synchrony with students in educational exchanges

A speaker classification framework for non-intrusive user modeling : speech-based personalization of in-car services

Speaker Classification, i.e. the automatic detection of certain characteristics of a person based on his or her voice, has a variety of applications in modern computer technology and artificial intelligence: As a non-intrusive source for user modeling, it can be employed for personalization of human-machine interfaces in numerous domains. This dissertation presents a principled approach to the design of a novel Speaker Classification system for automatic age and gender recognition which meets these demands. Based on literature studies, methods and concepts dealing with the underlying pattern recognition task are developed. The final system consists of an incremental GMM-SVM supervector architecture with several optimizations. An extensive data-driven experiment series explores the parameter space and serves as evaluation of the component. Further experiments investigate the language-independence of the approach. As an essential part of this thesis, a framework is developed that implements all tasks associated with the design and evaluation of Speaker Classification in an integrated development environment that is able to generate efficient runtime modules for multiple platforms. Applications from the automotive field and other domains demonstrate the practical benefit of the technology for personalization, e.g. by increasing local danger warning lead time for elderly drivers.Die Sprecherklassifikation, also die automatische Erkennung bestimmter Merkmale einer Person anhand ihrer Stimme, besitzt eine Vielzahl von Anwendungsmöglichkeiten in der modernen Computertechnik und Künstlichen Intelligenz: Als nicht-intrusive Wissensquelle für die Benutzermodellierung kann sie zur Personalisierung in vielen Bereichen eingesetzt werden. In dieser Dissertation wird ein fundierter Ansatz zum Entwurf eines neuartigen Sprecherklassifikationssystems zur automatischen Bestimmung von Alter und Geschlecht vorgestellt, welches diese Anforderungen erfüllt. Ausgehend von Literaturstudien werden Konzepte und Methoden zur Behandlung des zugrunde liegenden Mustererkennungsproblems entwickelt, welche zu einer inkrementell arbeitenden GMM-SVM-Supervector-Architektur mit diversen Optimierungen führen. Eine umfassende datengetriebene Experimentalreihe dient der Erforschung des Parameterraumes und zur Evaluierung der Komponente. Weitere Studien untersuchen die Sprachunabhängigkeit des Ansatzes. Als wesentlicher Bestandteil der Arbeit wird ein Framework entwickelt, das alle im Zusammenhang mit Entwurf und Evaluierung von Sprecherklassifikation anfallenden Aufgaben in einer integrierten Entwicklungsumgebung implementiert, welche effiziente Laufzeitmodule für verschiedene Plattformen erzeugen kann. Anwendungen aus dem Automobilbereich und weiteren Domänen demonstrieren den praktischen Nutzen der Technologie zur Personalisierung, z.B. indem die Vorlaufzeit von lokalen Gefahrenwarnungen für ältere Fahrer erhöht wird

Gesture generation by imitation : from human behavior to computer character animation

This dissertation shows how to generate conversational gestures for an animated agent based on annotated text input. The central idea is to imitate the gestural behavior of human individuals. Using TV show recordings as empirical data, gestural key parameters are extracted for the generation of natural and individual gestures. For each of the three tasks in the generation pipeline a software was developed. The generic ANVIL annotation tool allows to transcribe gesture and speech in the empirical data. The NOVALIS module uses the annotations to compute individual gesture profiles with statistical methods. The NOVA generator creates gestures based on these profiles and heuristic rules, and outputs them in a linear script. In all, this work presents a complete work pipeline from collecting empirical data to obtaining an executable script and provides the necessary software, too.Die vorliegende Dissertation stellt einen Ansatz zur Generierung von Konversationsgesten für animierte Agenten aus annotatiertem Textinput vor. Zentrale Idee ist es, die Gestik menschlicher Individuen zu imitieren. Als empirisches Material dient eine Fernsehsendung, aus der Schlüsselparameter zur Generierung natürlicher und individueller Gesten extrahiert werden. Die Generierungsaufgabe wurde in drei Schritten mit eigens entwickelter Software gelöst. Das generische ANVIL-Annotationswerkzeug ermöglicht die Transkription von Gestik und Sprache in den empirischen Daten. Das NOVALIS-Modul berechnet aus den Annotationen individuelle Gestenprofile mit Hilfe statistischer Verfahren. Der NOVAGenerator erzeugt Gesten anhand dieser Profile und allgemeiner Heuristiken und gibt diese in Skriptform aus. Die Arbeit stellt somit einen vollständigen Arbeitspfad von empirischer Datenerhebung bis zum abspielfertigen Skript vor und liefert die entsprechenden Software-Werkzeuge dazu

Gesture generation by imitation : from human behavior to computer character animation

This dissertation shows how to generate conversational gestures for an animated agent based on annotated text input. The central idea is to imitate the gestural behavior of human individuals. Using TV show recordings as empirical data, gestural key parameters are extracted for the generation of natural and individual gestures. For each of the three tasks in the generation pipeline a software was developed. The generic ANVIL annotation tool allows to transcribe gesture and speech in the empirical data. The NOVALIS module uses the annotations to compute individual gesture profiles with statistical methods. The NOVA generator creates gestures based on these profiles and heuristic rules, and outputs them in a linear script. In all, this work presents a complete work pipeline from collecting empirical data to obtaining an executable script and provides the necessary software, too.Die vorliegende Dissertation stellt einen Ansatz zur Generierung von Konversationsgesten für animierte Agenten aus annotatiertem Textinput vor. Zentrale Idee ist es, die Gestik menschlicher Individuen zu imitieren. Als empirisches Material dient eine Fernsehsendung, aus der Schlüsselparameter zur Generierung natürlicher und individueller Gesten extrahiert werden. Die Generierungsaufgabe wurde in drei Schritten mit eigens entwickelter Software gelöst. Das generische ANVIL-Annotationswerkzeug ermöglicht die Transkription von Gestik und Sprache in den empirischen Daten. Das NOVALIS-Modul berechnet aus den Annotationen individuelle Gestenprofile mit Hilfe statistischer Verfahren. Der NOVAGenerator erzeugt Gesten anhand dieser Profile und allgemeiner Heuristiken und gibt diese in Skriptform aus. Die Arbeit stellt somit einen vollständigen Arbeitspfad von empirischer Datenerhebung bis zum abspielfertigen Skript vor und liefert die entsprechenden Software-Werkzeuge dazu

The Palgrave Handbook of Digital Russia Studies

This open access handbook presents a multidisciplinary and multifaceted perspective on how the ‘digital’ is simultaneously changing Russia and the research methods scholars use to study Russia. It provides a critical update on how Russian society, politics, economy, and culture are reconfigured in the context of ubiquitous connectivity and accounts for the political and societal responses to digitalization. In addition, it answers practical and methodological questions in handling Russian data and a wide array of digital methods. The volume makes a timely intervention in our understanding of the changing field of Russian Studies and is an essential guide for scholars, advanced undergraduate and graduate students studying Russia today

The Palgrave Handbook of Digital Russia Studies

This open access handbook presents a multidisciplinary and multifaceted perspective on how the ‘digital’ is simultaneously changing Russia and the research methods scholars use to study Russia. It provides a critical update on how Russian society, politics, economy, and culture are reconfigured in the context of ubiquitous connectivity and accounts for the political and societal responses to digitalization. In addition, it answers practical and methodological questions in handling Russian data and a wide array of digital methods. The volume makes a timely intervention in our understanding of the changing field of Russian Studies and is an essential guide for scholars, advanced undergraduate and graduate students studying Russia today

European Approaches to Japanese Language and Linguistics

In this volume European specialists of Japanese language present new and original research into Japanese over a wide spectrum of topics which include descriptive, sociolinguistic, pragmatic and didactic accounts. The articles share a focus on contemporary issues and adopt new approaches to the study of Japanese that often are specific to European traditions of language study. The articles address an audience that includes both Japanese Studies and Linguistics. They are representative of the wide range of topics that are currently studied in European universities, and they address scholars and students alike

Exploring content-based language teaching practices to stimulate language use in grades 7 and 8 of Frisian trilingual primary education

This dissertation describes the teaching practices in Frisian trilingual primary education (grades 7 and 8) in which the use of Dutch, Frisian and English is stimulated in content-based language teaching. The teaching practices are compared over time, and the relation between teacher practices and student language development in the three target languages is assessed. Differences between teachers and between measurements are observed, but also the teacher practices between the three target language lessons show variation. We conclude that the use of the students’ entire language repertoire is beneficial for language development. It is found that stronger development of Dutch vocabulary and reading comprehension is related to the use of Dutch in Dutch target language lessons, and in which Frisian is also used in peer-interaction. Stronger Frisian vocabulary development is likely related to the use of Frisian only, by both teachers and students in Frisian target language lessons. However, Frisian reading comprehension development is probably related to the use of Dutch in addition to that of Frisian for the interaction between teacher and pupils, the interaction between pupils and output.Furthermore, stronger Frisian vocabulary development is related to both meaning making strategies, and more frequent application of teaching methods to stimulate language use. Better Dutch vocabulary development may well be related to the stimulation of student contributions in whole-classroom discussion in Dutch. In this research no relations are found between English language development and specific teaching practices. English language development may be mainly related to the use of media at home