A Wikipedia Literature Review

This paper was originally designed as a literature review for a doctoral dissertation focusing on Wikipedia. This exposition gives the structure of Wikipedia and the latest trends in Wikipedia research

Learner Modelling for Individualised Reading in a Second Language

Extensive reading is an effective language learning technique that involves fast reading of large quantities of easy and interesting second language (L2) text. However, graded readers used by beginner learners are expensive and often dull. The alternative is text written for native speakers (authentic text), which is generally too difficult for beginners. The aim of this research is to overcome this problem by developing a computer-assisted approach that enables learners of all abilities to perform effective extensive reading using freely-available text on the web. This thesis describes the research, development and evaluation of a complex software system called FERN that combines learner modelling and iCALL with narrow reading of electronic text. The system incorporates four key components: (1) automatic glossing of difficult words in texts, (2) individualised search engine for locating interesting texts of appropriate difficulty, (3) supplementary exercises for introducing key vocabulary and reviewing difficult words and (4) reliably monitoring reading and reporting progress. FERN was optimised for English speakers learning Spanish, but is easily adapted for learners of others languages. The suitability of the FERN system was evaluated through corpus analysis, machine translation analysis and a year-long study with second year university Spanish class. The machine translation analysis combined with the classroom study demonstrated that the word and phrase error rate generated in FERN is low enough to validate the use of machine translation to automatically generate glosses, but is high enough that a translation dictionary is required as a backup. The classroom study demonstrated that when aided by glosses students can read at over 100 words per minute if they know 95% of the words, whereas compared to the 98% word knowledge required for effective unaided extensive reading. A corpus analysis demonstrated that beginner learners of Spanish can do effective narrow reading of news articles using FERN after learning only 200–300 high-frequency word families, in addition to familiarity with English-Spanish cognates and proper nouns. FERN also reliably monitors reading speeds and word counts, and provides motivating progress reports, which enable teachers to set concrete reading goals that dramatically increase the quantity that students read, as demonstrated in the user study

The value relevance of digitalization disclosure in integrated reports: A South African perspective

The inevitable disruptions in the Fourth Industrial Revolution necessitates that companies provide investors with digitalization disclosure in integrated reports. This paper investigated whether digitalization disclosure in integrated reports affects the share prices of South African listed companies. The relationship between digitalization disclosure and share prices is examined using the Ohlson (1995) Model through the application of panel data. A new proxy for the “other information” variable in the Ohlson (1995) Model was created for digitalization disclosure by developing a disclosure index to measure the scope of digitalization disclosure in integrated reports. The disclosure index was incorporated into a new text analysis software named the Fourth Industrial Revolution Disclosure Analysis Tool (4IRDAT), which uses algorithms based on natural language processing techniques to facilitate the content analysis of digitalization disclosure in integrated reports. Two scenarios were evaluated: including loss-making companies and excluding loss-making companies. The sample size, including loss-making companies and excluding loss-making companies, was 90 (270 observations) and 72 (216 observations), respectively, for three years from 2018 to 2020. It was established that there was an increase in digitalization disclosure over three years. The results indicated that digitalization disclosure had yet to be incorporated in the share price of South African listed companies for both scenarios. This study is indispensable to regulators, practitioners, standard setters, and academics because it provides empirical evidence on the value relevance of digitalization disclosure in integrated reports. This area has not been interrogated in a South African context

Instrumentation of learning situation using automated speech transcription : A prototyping approach

International audienceThis paper presents the ongoing conception of a set of tools, based on live transcription of speech during lectures and designed to instrument traditional lectures as well as web conferences or hybrid learning situations. The toolset exploits speech and interactions taking place during courses, keeps track of them and facilitates their reuse both in students' studies and in future iterations of the course delivered by the teacher. Its goal is to help students stay focused on the teacher's explanations and offer them greater possibilities of interactions. The prototype was conceived with an approach based on the analysis of communicational and informational needs of the end users, especially in regard to the instrumentation possibilities offered by the innovative technologies considered in the project. In this paper, we detail the different tools produced in order to offer synchronous and asynchronous support to the learning activity. We describe a real-life test as well as changes brought to the device afterwards, and finally we describe the first experiment conducted with the device