Enhancing Free-text Interactions in a Communication Skills Learning Environment

Learning environments frequently use gamification to enhance user interactions.Virtual characters with whom players engage in simulated conversations often employ prescripted dialogues; however, free user inputs enable deeper immersion and higher-order cognition. In our learning environment, experts developed a scripted scenario as a sequence of potential actions, and we explore possibilities for enhancing interactions by enabling users to type free inputs that are matched to the pre-scripted statements using Natural Language Processing techniques. In this paper, we introduce a clustering mechanism that provides recommendations for fine-tuning the pre-scripted answers in order to better match user inputs

Knowledge and Management Models for Sustainable Growth

In the last years sustainability has become a topic of global concern and a key issue in the strategic agenda of both business organizations and public authorities and organisations. Significant changes in business landscape, the emergence of new technology, including social media, the pressure of new social concerns, have called into question established conceptualizations of competitiveness, wealth creation and growth. New and unaddressed set of issues regarding how private and public organisations manage and invest their resources to create sustainable value have brought to light. In particular the increasing focus on environmental and social themes has suggested new dimensions to be taken into account in the value creation dynamics, both at organisations and communities level. For companies the need of integrating corporate social and environmental responsibility issues into strategy and daily business operations, pose profound challenges, which, in turn, involve numerous processes and complex decisions influenced by many stakeholders. Facing these challenges calls for the creation, use and exploitation of new knowledge as well as the development of proper management models, approaches and tools aimed to contribute to the development and realization of environmentally and socially sustainable business strategies and practices

Landscapes in Flux. Book of Proceedings

Peer reviewed proceedings ECLAS 2015 Conference|21 to 23 September| Department of Landscape Architecture, Estonian University of Life Sciences, Tartu, EstoniaEvery scientific paper published in these Conference Proceedings was peer reviewed. All explanations, data, results, etc. contained in this book have been made by authors to their best knowledge and were true and accurate at the time of publication. However, some errors could not be excluded, so neither the publisher, the editors, nor the authors can accept any legal responsibility or liability for any errors and omissions that may be made. © All rights reserved. No part of these proceedings may be reproduced by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.Department of Landscape Architecture, Estonian University of Life Sciences On behalf of European Council of Landscape Architecture Schools (ECLAS