Individual and Domain Adaptation in Sentence Planning for Dialogue

One of the biggest challenges in the development and deployment of spoken dialogue systems is the design of the spoken language generation module. This challenge arises from the need for the generator to adapt to many features of the dialogue domain, user population, and dialogue context. A promising approach is trainable generation, which uses general-purpose linguistic knowledge that is automatically adapted to the features of interest, such as the application domain, individual user, or user group. In this paper we present and evaluate a trainable sentence planner for providing restaurant information in the MATCH dialogue system. We show that trainable sentence planning can produce complex information presentations whose quality is comparable to the output of a template-based generator tuned to this domain. We also show that our method easily supports adapting the sentence planner to individuals, and that the individualized sentence planners generally perform better than models trained and tested on a population of individuals. Previous work has documented and utilized individual preferences for content selection, but to our knowledge, these results provide the first demonstration of individual preferences for sentence planning operations, affecting the content order, discourse structure and sentence structure of system responses. Finally, we evaluate the contribution of different feature sets, and show that, in our application, n-gram features often do as well as features based on higher-level linguistic representations

Speech-plans: Generating evaluative responses in spoken dialogue

Recent work on evaluation of spoken dialogue systems indicates that better algorithms are needed for the presentation of complex information in speech. Current dialogue systems often rely on presenting sets of options and their attributes sequentially. This places a large memory burden on users, who have to remember complex trade-offs between multiple options and their attributes. To address these problems we build on previous work using multiattribute decision theory to devise speech-planning algorithms that present usertailored summaries, comparisons and recommendations that allow users to focus on critical differences between options and their attributes. We discuss the differences between speech and text planning that result from the particular demands of the speech situation.

Generating Visual Arguments: a Media-independent Approach

... In this paper, we take the position that certain types of arguments that can be presented visually in information graphics (e.g., bar charts and scatter plots) can be generated from an underlying media-independent representation of a presentation. In support of this claim, first we briefly describe the architecture we are developing for the generation of integrated text and information graphics presentations. In this architecture, mediaindependent communicative acts are transformed into user task specifications which are the basis for the automatic design of the presentation's graphics. Then we present an example showing correspondences between the media-independent representation of an argument and the tasks that would be used to design a graphic expressing the argument

From evidence-based research to practice-based evidence : disseminating a web-based computer-tailored workplace sitting intervention through a health promotion organisation

Prolonged sitting has been linked to adverse health outcomes; therefore, we developed and examined a web-based, computer-tailored workplace sitting intervention. As we had previously shown good effectiveness, the next stage was to conduct a dissemination study. This study reports on the dissemination efforts of a health promotion organisation, associated costs, reach achieved, and attributes of the website users. The organisation systematically registered all the time and resources invested to promote the intervention. Website usage statistics (reach) and descriptive statistics (website users' attributes) were also assessed. Online strategies (promotion on their homepage; sending e-mails, newsletters, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn posts to professional partners) were the main dissemination methods. The total time investment was 25.6 h, which cost approximately 845 EUR in salaries. After sixteen months, 1599 adults had visited the website and 1500 (93.8%) completed the survey to receive personalized sitting advice. This sample was 38.3 +/- 11.0 years, mainly female (76.9%), college/university educated (89.0%), highly sedentary (88.5% sat >8 h/day) and intending to change (93.0%) their sitting. Given the small time and money investment, these outcomes are positive and indicate the potential for wide-scale dissemination. However, more efforts are needed to reach men, non-college/university educated employees, and those not intending behavioural change

Constructing a Virtual Training Laboratory Using Intelligent Agents

This paper reports on the results and experiences of the Trilogy project; a collaborative project concerned with the development of a virtual research laboratory using intelligence agents. This laboratory is designed to support the training of research students in telecommunications traffic engineering. Training research students involves a number of basic activities. They may seek guidance from, or exchange ideas with, more experienced colleagues. High quality academic papers, books and research reports provide a sound basis for developing and maintaining a good understanding of an area of research. Experimental tools enable new ideas to be evaluated, and hypotheses tested. These three components-collaboration, information and experimentation- are central to any research activity, and a good training environment for research should integrate them in a seamless fashion. To this end, we describe the design and implementation of an agent-based virtual laboratory

Phase 2 STS new user development program. Volume 4: Guidance/instructions for representatives

The overall STS New User Development (NUD) Function is shown. The user development function is directly responsible for implementing the strategy derived to develop a specific, prospective new user. The burden of actually developing the user falls on the NUD representative, and the success of his user contacts will depend upon how well he is prepared to interface with the user. The guidance/instructions as to what a NUD representative needs to know about the prospective user, and the type of data he should provide when calling on a potential user, are presented

Big data: the potential role of research data management and research data registries

Universities generate and hold increasingly vast quantities of research data – both in the form of large, well-structured datasets but more often in the form of a long tail of small, distributed datasets which collectively amount to ‘Big Data’ and offer significant potential for reuse. However, unlike big data, these collections of small data are often less well curated and are usually very difficult to find thereby reducing their potential reuse value. The Digital Curation Centre (DCC) works to support UK universities to better manage and expose their research data so that its full value may be realised. With a focus on tapping into this long tail of small data, this presentation will cover two main DCC, services: DMPonline which helps researchers to identify potentially valuable research data and to plan for its longer-term retention and reuse; and the UK pilot research data registry and discovery service (RDRDS) which will help to ensure that research data produced in UK HEIs can be found, understood, and reused. Initially we will introduce participants to the role of data management planning to open up dialogue between researchers and library services to ensure potentially valuable research data are managed appropriately and made available for reuse where feasible. DMPs provide institutions with valuable insights into the scale of their data holdings, highlight any ethical and legal requirements that need to be met, and enable planning for dissemination and reuse. We will also introduce the DCC’s DMPonline, a tool to help researchers write DMPs, which can be customised by institutions and integrated with other systems to simplify and enhance the management and reuse of data. In the second part of the presentation we will focus on making selected research data more visible for reuse and explore the potential value of local and national research data registries. In particular we will highlight the Jisc-funded RDRDS pilot to establish a UK national service that aggregates metadata relating to data collections held in research institutions and subject data centres. The session will conclude by exploring some of the opportunities we may collaboratively explore in facilitating the management, aggregation and reuse of research data

Advances in Teaching & Learning Day Abstracts 2004

Proceedings of the Advances in Teaching & Learning Day Regional Conference held at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston in 2004