20 research outputs found
Follow-up question handling in the IMIX and Ritel systems: A comparative study
One of the basic topics of question answering (QA) dialogue systems is how follow-up questions should be interpreted by a QA system. In this paper, we shall discuss our experience with the IMIX and Ritel systems, for both of which a follow-up question handling scheme has been developed, and corpora have been collected. These two systems are each other's opposites in many respects: IMIX is multimodal, non-factoid, black-box QA, while Ritel is speech, factoid, keyword-based QA. Nevertheless, we will show that they are quite comparable, and that it is fruitful to examine the similarities and differences. We shall look at how the systems are composed, and how real, non-expert, users interact with the systems. We shall also provide comparisons with systems from the literature where possible, and indicate where open issues lie and in what areas existing systems may be improved. We conclude that most systems have a common architecture with a set of common subtasks, in particular detecting follow-up questions and finding referents for them. We characterise these tasks using the typical techniques used for performing them, and data from our corpora. We also identify a special type of follow-up question, the discourse question, which is asked when the user is trying to understand an answer, and propose some basic methods for handling it
Developing a question answering system for the slovene language
In todayćs world the majority of information is sought after on the internet. A common method is the use of search engines. However since the result of a query to the search engine is a ranked list of results, this is not the final step. It is up to the user to review the results and determine which of the results provides the information needed. Often this process is time consuming and does not provide the sought after information. Besides the number of returned results the limiting factor is often the lack of ability of the usersto form the correct query. The solution for this can be found in the formof question answering systems, where the user proposes a question in the natural language, similarly as talking to another person. The answer is the exact answer instead of a list of possible results. This paper presents the design of a question answering system in natural slovene language. The system searches for the answers for our target domain (Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science) with the use of a local database, databases of the facultyćs information system, MS Excel files and through web service calls. We have developed two separate applications: one for users and the other for the administrators of the system. With the help of the latter application the administrators supervise the functioning and use of entire system. The former application is actually the system that answers the questions
Features that Predict the Acceptability of Java and JavaScript Answers on Stack Overflow
Context: It is not uncommon for a new team member to join an existing Agile
software development team, even after development has started. This new team
member faces a number of challenges before they are integrated into the team
and can contribute productively to team progress. Ideally, each newcomer should
be supported in this transition through an effective team onboarding program,
although prior evidence suggests that this is challenging for many
organisations. Objective: We seek to understand how Agile teams address the
challenge of team onboarding in order to inform future onboarding design.
Method: We conducted an interview survey of eleven participants from eight
organisations to investigate what onboarding activities are common across Agile
software development teams. We also identify common goals of onboarding from a
synthesis of literature. A repertory grid instrument is used to map the
contributions of onboarding techniques to onboarding goals. Results: Our study
reveals that a broad range of team onboarding techniques, both formal and
informal, are used in practice. It also shows that particular techniques that
have high contributions to a given goal or set of goals. Conclusions: In
presenting a set of onboarding goals to consider and an evidence-based
mechanism for selecting techniques to achieve the desired goals it is expected
that this study will contribute to better-informed onboarding design and
planning. An increase in practitioner awareness of the options for supporting
new team members is also an expected outcome.Comment: Conference, 11 pages, 3 figures, 2 table
Answering clinical questions with knowledge-based and statistical techniques
The combination of recent developments in question-answering research and the availability of unparalleled resources developed specifically for automatic semantic processing of text in the medical domain provides a unique opportunity to explore complex question answering in the domain of clinical medicine. This article presents a system designed to satisfy the information needs of physicians practicing evidence-based medicine. We have developed a series of knowledge extractors, which employ a combination of knowledge-based and statistical techniques, for automatically identifying clinically relevant aspects of MEDLINE abstracts. These extracted elements serve as the input to an algorithm that scores the relevance of citations with respect to structured representations of information needs, in accordance with the principles of evidencebased medicine. Starting with an initial list of citations retrieved by PubMed, our system can bring relevant abstracts into higher ranking positions, and from these abstracts generate responses that directly answer physicians ’ questions. We describe three separate evaluations: one focused on the accuracy of the knowledge extractors, one conceptualized as a document reranking task, and finally, an evaluation of answers by two physicians. Experiments on a collection of real-world clinical questions show that our approach significantly outperforms the already competitive PubMed baseline. 1
What Makes a Good Answer? The Role of Context in Question Answering
Question answering systems have proven to be helpful to users because they can provide succinct answers that do not require users to wade through a large number of documents. However, despite recent advances in the underlying question answering technology, the problem of designing effective interfaces has been largely unexplored. We conducted a user study to investigate this area and discovered that, overall, users prefer paragraph-sized chunks of text over just an exact phrase as the answer to their questions. Furthermore, users generally prefer answers embedded in context, regardless of the perceived reliability of the source documents. When researching a topic, increasing the amount of text returned to users significantly decreases the number of queries that they pose to the system, suggesting that users utilize supporting text to answer related questions. We believe that these results can serve to guide future developments in question answering interfaces
Improving the interfaces of online discussion forums to enhance learning support : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Information Science in Information Systems at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand
This thesis describes a research work aimed at improving the interfaces of online discussion
forums (ODFs) in relation to their functional support to enhance learning. These ODFs
form part of almost all Learning Management Systems (LMSs) such as WebCT, Moodle
and Blackboard, which are widely used in education nowadays. Although ODFs are
identified as valuable sources to learning, their interfaces are limited in terms of providing
support to students, such as in the areas of managing their postings as well as in facilitating
them to quickly locate and obtain specified information. In addition, these systems lack
features to support inter-institutional cooperation that could potentially increase knowledge
sharing between students and educators of different institutions. The interface design
objective of this study therefore was to explore and overcome the limitations identified as
above, and enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of ODFs’ support to learning. Using a
task centered design approach; the required features were developed, and implemented in a
working prototype called eQuake (electronic Question answer knowledge environment).
eQuake is a shared online discussion forum system developed as an add-on to a well-known
open source e-learning platform (Moodle). This system was intended for use among interinstitutional
students in New Zealand tertiary institutions that teach similar courses. The
improved interface functionalities of eQuake are expected to enhance learning support in
terms of widening communication among users, increasing knowledge base, providing
existing matching answer(s) quickly to students, and exposing students to multiple
perspectives. This study considers such improvements to ODF interfaces as vital to enable
users to enjoy the benefits of technology-mediated environment. The perceived usefulness
and ease-of-use of improved features in eQuake were evaluated using a quantitative
experimental research method. The evaluation was conducted at three tertiary institutions in
New Zealand, and the overall results indicated positive response, although some
suggestions for improvement have been made in the evaluation. This thesis presents a
review of the related literature, describes the design and development of a user interface,
followed by its implementation in eQuake, and a description of the evaluation. The thesis
concludes with recommendations for better interface design of ODFs and provides
suggestions for future research in this area