Summarization of Films and Documentaries Based on Subtitles and Scripts

We assess the performance of generic text summarization algorithms applied to films and documentaries, using the well-known behavior of summarization of news articles as reference. We use three datasets: (i) news articles, (ii) film scripts and subtitles, and (iii) documentary subtitles. Standard ROUGE metrics are used for comparing generated summaries against news abstracts, plot summaries, and synopses. We show that the best performing algorithms are LSA, for news articles and documentaries, and LexRank and Support Sets, for films. Despite the different nature of films and documentaries, their relative behavior is in accordance with that obtained for news articles.Comment: 7 pages, 9 tables, 4 figures, submitted to Pattern Recognition Letters (Elsevier

Incorporating Electronic Books into a Graduate Reading Methods Class: Improving the Comprehension of Students in Grades K-12

The purpose of this paper was to explore how various features of electronic books captured students’ attention and built their confidence and knowledge base, and to what extent, if any, reading electronic books supported critical thinking skills and understanding of the text of students in grades K-12; the experienced teachers were enrolled in a summer reading/writing literacy program, offered by a mid-western university. The graduate reading methods course consisted of a tutoring session utilizing electronic books to improve the comprehension of students in grades K-12. The experienced teachers implemented electronic books to provide a context that helped their students to build conceptual and experiential background as they construct meaning and develop important literacy skills. The electronic books helped K-12 students expand their knowledge of fluency and retelling as they followed along reading for meaning and pleasure. The interactive capabilities of electronic books made the screen more attractive to K-12 students and thus supported their understanding of the text. They demonstrated what they understood from the text in book discussions; therefore, the electronic books were useful to them. The electronic books, multimedia applications, and audio recordings were part of the instruction and played a prominent a role in increasing levels of comprehension. The experienced teachers, who were exposed to electronic books, responded positively to implementing them into the curriculum. This paper may serve as a model for both professors in teacher education and reading teachers to integrate technology in a meaningful context in their instruction

Contextual question answering for the health domain

Studies have shown that natural language interfaces such as question answering and conversational systems allow information to be accessed and understood more easily by users who are unfamiliar with the nuances of the delivery mechanisms (e.g., keyword-based search engines) or have limited literacy in certain domains (e.g., unable to comprehend health-related content due to terminology barrier). In particular, the increasing use of the web for health information prompts us to reexamine our existing delivery mechanisms. We present enquireMe, which is a contextual question answering system that provides lay users with the ability to obtain responses about a wide range of health topics by vaguely expressing at the start and gradually refining their information needs over the course of an interaction session using natural language. enquireMe allows the users to engage in 'conversations' about their health concerns, a process that can be therapeutic in itself. The system uses community-driven question-answer pairs from the web together with a decay model to deliver the top scoring answers as responses to the users' unrestricted inputs. We evaluated enquireMe using benchmark data from WebMD and TREC to assess the accuracy of system-generated answers. Despite the absence of complex knowledge acquisition and deep language processing, enquireMe is comparable to the state-of-the-art question answering systems such as START as well as those interactive systems from TREC

Survey on Evaluation Methods for Dialogue Systems

In this paper we survey the methods and concepts developed for the evaluation of dialogue systems. Evaluation is a crucial part during the development process. Often, dialogue systems are evaluated by means of human evaluations and questionnaires. However, this tends to be very cost and time intensive. Thus, much work has been put into finding methods, which allow to reduce the involvement of human labour. In this survey, we present the main concepts and methods. For this, we differentiate between the various classes of dialogue systems (task-oriented dialogue systems, conversational dialogue systems, and question-answering dialogue systems). We cover each class by introducing the main technologies developed for the dialogue systems and then by presenting the evaluation methods regarding this class

A case study inquiry into the relative impact of Balanced Reading instruction on Hispanic students in a highly culturally diverse elementary school

This research explores the relative impact of Balanced Reading instruction upon Hispanic students in a highly culturally diverse elementary school. This case study inquiry focuses on Hispanic students learning to read in English in kindergarten, first and third grade, how these Hispanic students are affected by the classroom setting within the context of the Balanced Reading instructional framework of each respective grade, and what are the similarities and differences in the learning methodologies and strategies that impact the learning curve of these Hispanic students. The researcher collects qualitative data to determine the methods and strategies found to be most effective and frequently used in reading of Hispanic students. Data includes documentation: field notes, observations, interviews, questionnaires, and archival information. This multiple case study inquiry focuses on six Hispanic students: two in kindergarten, one in first grade, and three in third grade. Stratified purposeful sampling is used to facilitate comparisons. Spradley\u27s Developmental Research is used for componential analysis of the three case study groups and the Constant Comparative Method Analysis for analysis of interviews and questionnaires of both administration and teachers. Lastly, cross-case analysis is used to arrive at a more systematic and comprehensive instructional approach for Hispanic students in a highly culturally diverse elementary school. The findings of the case study conclude the Balanced Reading instructional framework is appropriate for educating Hispanic students in a highly culturally diverse elementary school and these Hispanic elementary students are able to acquire a second language, English, by means of a set of appropriate and effective teaching methods and strategies across the curriculum and diverse elementary grades from certificated teachers who use only English instruction without instructional support. These students are Spanish-speaking students upon entering elementary school and are taught only in an English-speaking environment without the use of translated instructional materials. The use of these methods and strategies across the curriculum and grade levels validates the theoretical claims that with appropriate teaching all students, no matter their cultural background, can achieve academically (Carlo, August, & McLaughlin, et. al., 2004; Luftig, 2003; Collins & Cheek, 2000; Garcia, 1999; Banks, 1994)