How to Evaluate Controlled Natural Languages

This paper presents a general framework how controlled natural languages can be evaluated and compared on the basis of user experiments. The subjects are asked to classify given statements (in the language to be tested) as either true or false with respect to a certain situation that is shown in a graphical notation called "ontographs". A first experiment has been conducted that applies this framework to the language Attempto Controlled English (ACE)

The effect of using facebook markup language (fbml) for designing an e-learning model in higher education

This study examines the use of Facebook Markup Language (FBML) to design an e-learning model to facilitate teaching and learning in an academic setting. The qualitative research study presents a case study on how, Facebook is used to support collaborative activities in higher education. We used FBML to design an e-learning model called processes for e-learning resources in the Specialist Learning Resources Diploma (SLRD) program. Two groups drawn from the SLRD program were used; First were the participants in the treatment group and second in the control group. Statistical analysis in the form of a t-test was used to compare the dependent variables between the two groups. The findings show a difference in the mean score between the pre-test and the post-test for the treatment group (achievement, the skill, trends). Our findings suggest that the use of FBML can support collaborative knowledge creation and improved the academic achievement of participatns. The findings are expected to provide insights into promoting the use of Facebook in a learning management system (LMS).Comment: Mohammed Amasha, Salem Alkhalaf, "The Effect of using Facebook Markup Language (FBML) for Designing an E-Learning Model in Higher Education". International Journal of Research in Computer Science, 4 (5): pp. 1-9, January 201

Student projects: plagiarism and assessment

Within the Information Technology degree programme of the University of Reading, the students undertake a major project in their final year. The module is both a hurdle to an honours degree and significant in terms of assessment weighting. The two year history so far has shown that bad citation and plagiarism are issues, and in one case called for the due referral of a project report. In the light of experience to date, we are focusing firstly on plagiarism prevention, giving generic advice on report writing and citation practice, and secondly on detection. In the longer term, I believe we need to reflect on what capabilities we should be creating in our undergraduates and therefore what and how we should be assessing them

Making in-class skills training more effective: the scope for interactive videos to complement the delivery of practical pedestrian training

Skills and awareness of young pedestrians can be improved with on-street practical pedestrian training, often delivered in schools in the United Kingdom by local authorities with the intention of improving road safety. This training is often supplemented by in-class paper based worksheet activities which are seen to be less effective than practical training in that they focus on knowledge acquisition rather than directly improving the correct application of safe pedestrian skills at the roadside. Previous research indicates that interactive video tools have the potential to develop procedural skills whilst offering an engaging road safety educational experience, which could positively impact on road crossing behaviour.In this paper, the design and development of a hazard-identification interactive road safety training video targeting child road crossing skills is presented. The interactive video was shown to be an engaging training resource for 6-7 year old children. The tool’s scope for improving pedestrians’ roadside skills is considered along with the wider implications for interactive video to aid safety training in other areas

Expert-Generated and Auto-Generated Socratic Tutoring Systems For Code Comprehension

Programming skills are a vital part of many disciplines but can be challenging to teach and learn. Thus, the programming courses are considered difficult and a major stumbling block. To overcome these challenges, students could benefit from extensive individual support such as tutoring, but there are simply not enough qualified tutors available to meet rising demands.A potential solution is the development of intelligent tutoring systems (ITSs), which offer individualized, one-on-one instruction. Such systems can offer the support to make programming instruction more effective, scalable and reduce existing teachers\u27 workloads.This dissertation demonstrates how conversational ITSs and the Socratic method of teaching can improve a novice\u27s understanding of programming concepts and, in particular, the scaffolding of code comprehension processes. Furthermore, this work provides a novel method to automatically author a Socratic dialogue-based ITS. Indeed, two major outcomes of this work are a Socratic dialogue-based ITS and an automated dialogue authoring tool, which generates full Socratic dialogue from Java source code.The key objectives of this dissertation were, first, to determine whether the Socratic method would be effective at eliciting learners to engage in self-explanations with the help of the Socratic Tutor ITS and, second, to assess the quality of Socratic Author\u27s auto-generated tutorial dialogue. Thus, the work presented here sought to answer two main research questions: (1) can a Socratic ITS lead to improved code comprehension? and (2) to what extent can Socratic dialogue be generated automatically?In sum, this research helps establish a relationship between code comprehension and the use of the Socratic method in learning computer programming. Furthermore, the work introduces a novel approach for generating Socratic dialogue from source code with examples for the Java programming language. The auto-authoring tool could help teachers and ITS developers create tutorial dialogues automatically from Java code without requiring nondomain knowledge. To the best of our knowledge, no such auto-generation of tutorial dialogues from source code has been done before and thus constituting a premiere

Hytexpros : a hypermedia information retrieval system

The Hypermedia information retrieval system makes use of the specific capabilities of hypermedia systems with information retrieval operations and provides new kind of information management tools. It combines both hypermedia and information retrieval to offer end-users the possibility of navigating, browsing and searching a large collection of documents to satisfy an information need. TEXPROS is an intelligent document processing and retrieval system that supports storing, extracting, classifying, categorizing, retrieval and browsing enterprise information. TEXPROS is a perfect application to apply hypermedia information retrieval techniques. In this dissertation, we extend TEXPROS to a hypermedia information retrieval system called HyTEXPROS with hypertext functionalities, such as node, typed and weighted links, anchors, guided-tours, network overview, bookmarks, annotations and comments, and external linkbase. It describes the whole information base including the metadata and the original documents as network nodes connected by links. Through hypertext functionalities, a user can construct dynamically an information path by browsing through pieces of the information base. By adding hypertext functionalities to TEXPROS, HyTEXPROS is created. It changes its working domain from a personal document process domain to a personal library domain accompanied with citation techniques to process original documents. A four-level conceptual architecture is presented as the system architecture of HyTEXPROS. Such architecture is also referred to as the reference model of HyTEXPROS. Detailed description of HyTEXPROS, using the First Order Logic Calculus, is also proposed. An early version of a prototype is briefly described

Learning differences & digital equity in the classroom

This chapter addresses digital equity in the classroom for students with learning differences, as well as the role of technology in the provision of equitable education for the full diversity of students. The chapter discusses the evolving opportunities and challenges that information technology in the classroom presents to students with learning differences and their teachers. To meaningfully understand this topic requires an understanding of the complex context, the forces at play, and their relation to students with learning differences. Among the forces at play are policies, regulations, the accessibility movement, technical trends, instructional design strategies, educational publishing, open educational resources, pedagogical trends, quality control approaches in education, and governance of formal education. The chapter highlights the benefits to all students of designing the classroom experience for students with learning differences

Learning Buckets: Helping Teachers Introduce Flexibility in the Management of Learning Artifacts Across Spaces

Producción Científicaechnology offers rich opportunities for learning across different physical and virtual spaces. However, most of current across-spaces proposals are either highly teacher-centered, inflexible in the students’ self-management of learning artifacts during the enactment, or allow the teacher little/no control of such students’ management of artifacts. Moreover, these proposals tend to be disconnected from the practices and tools that are usual in the classroom. How can we achieve a middle ground between keeping the teacher in control of across-spaces situations and, at the same time, providing students with a degree of flexibility to manage learning artifacts? Aiming to address such challenge we propose the notion of learning bucket, and the Bucket-Server, a system implementing such notion. A learning bucket is a container of learning artifacts which are generated and/or accessed across-spaces by the students during the enactment, according to constraints configured by teachers at design time. The responsive evaluation conducted, based on a feature analysis and a pilot study with experts, suggests that learning buckets can help evolve from teacher- to student-centered approaches, while maintaining the teacher in control of students’ actions. The evaluation also indicates that the Bucket-Server surpasses the support provided by alternative proposals to across-spaces learning.Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (Project TIN2014- 53199-C3-2- R)Junta de Castilla y León (programa de apoyo a proyectos de investigación – Ref. VA277U14