Crowdsourcing the Perception of Machine Teaching

Teachable interfaces can empower end-users to attune machine learning systems to their idiosyncratic characteristics and environment by explicitly providing pertinent training examples. While facilitating control, their effectiveness can be hindered by the lack of expertise or misconceptions. We investigate how users may conceptualize, experience, and reflect on their engagement in machine teaching by deploying a mobile teachable testbed in Amazon Mechanical Turk. Using a performance-based payment scheme, Mechanical Turkers (N = 100) are called to train, test, and re-train a robust recognition model in real-time with a few snapshots taken in their environment. We find that participants incorporate diversity in their examples drawing from parallels to how humans recognize objects independent of size, viewpoint, location, and illumination. Many of their misconceptions relate to consistency and model capabilities for reasoning. With limited variation and edge cases in testing, the majority of them do not change strategies on a second training attempt.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures, 5 tables, CHI2020 conferenc

Pilot study of crowdsourcing evidence-based practice research for adults with aphasia

textThe purpose of this study is to explore crowdsourcing as a research paradigm for creating evidence-based practice research in the field of speech pathology. Using an Internet survey, respondents provided de-identified information about one patient with aphasia they had treated in the previous year. The respondents were then asked to rate the success of treatment. Analysis and grading of the responses was performed to identify which responses were usable for the purpose of planning a treatment for a patient with similar demographics and diagnostic make-up. Results showed that crowdsourcing is a viable research method; however, further refinements to the collection and analysis are required before it can be an effectively used.Communication Sciences and Disorder

21st Century Englishes Conference 2018 Program

Program from the 6th Annual 21st Century Englishes Conference

Bookmark: The magazine of the UMass Amherst Libraries

In line with the UMass Amherst Libraries’ mission, some of our most important work as an organization this past year has been affirming that Black Lives Matter. Staff created a Library Guide featuring resources on race and identity, including new books, articles, films, and other materials to support both personal and academic research and inquiry. We marked the 40th anniversary of the W. E. B. Du Bois Papers coming to UMass by documenting on film scholars’ thinking on the relevance of Du Bois’s work today. In this issue, we for the first time publish “Platform for the Progressive Party,” a piece of writing by Du Bois that shows how Americans 70 years ago were fighting for freedom. We are looking closely at our own practices within the Libraries, to see what we need to change to live our values. I am deeply grateful for the collective wisdom of staff at every level throughout the Libraries who guide our work. All of our services have been available online since March, and the Libraries opened over the summer for contactless pickup and printing, as well as by appointment for activities that need to occur in person, like using archival materials and retrieving of 3D printed objects. It is a testament to the creativity and dedication of library staff that we were able to successfully pivot to remote work while providing all the high-quality services our students and faculty depend on. We have learned significant lessons from our experience working outside of the physical confines of our building and away from our physical collections. Fortunately, our librarians have been adopting and teaching others about digital resources for 30 years, and are experts in these fields. We have learned that our work providing access to information is more important than ever. In this issue of Bookmark magazine, you will find many examples of how our work continues, such as welcoming new staff, supporting students, working with researchers and historians, bringing in new collections, making sure our resources are accessible to all, and even documenting the campus experience of the pandemic

Disrupting the Digital Humanities

All too often, defining a discipline becomes more an exercise of exclusion than inclusion. Disrupting the Digital Humanities seeks to rethink how we map disciplinary terrain by directly confronting the gatekeeping impulse of many other so-called field-defining collections. What is most beautiful about the work of the Digital Humanities is exactly the fact that it can’t be tidily anthologized. In fact, the desire to neatly define the Digital Humanities (to filter the DH-y from the DH) is a way of excluding the radically diverse work that actually constitutes the field. This collection, then, works to push and prod at the edges of the Digital Humanities — to open the Digital Humanities rather than close it down. Ultimately, it’s exactly the fringes, the outliers, that make the Digital Humanities both heterogeneous and rigorous. This collection does not constitute yet another reservoir for the new Digital Humanities canon. Rather, its aim is less about assembling content as it is about creating new conversations. Building a truly communal space for the digital humanities requires that we all approach that space with a commitment to: 1) creating open and non-hierarchical dialogues; 2) championing non-traditional work that might not otherwise be recognized through conventional scholarly channels; 3) amplifying marginalized voices; 4) advocating for students and learners; and 5) sharing generously and openly to support the work of our peers

Using digital technology to engage people with varying degrees of sight loss with archives and filmmaking during COVID-19

When the Covid-19 pandemic reached Europe in March 2020, the official archive for Northern Ireland, PRONI (Public Record Office of Northern Ireland) was forced to close its doors and move all work online, including its outreach programmes. One of the people to benefit from the programme was a group with different degrees of sight loss from the Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB). Ten people aged 20-60s took part in Everyday is a School Day, an eight-week filmmaking project which used Zoom and smartphone filmmaking to connect them with PRONI’s archives and help them make short films about their experiences of education in 2021. A year later we brought the group back to PRONI for a second project, Music Tales, which helped them continue to develop filmmaking skills and to delve deeper into the archives and explore the role of music in their lives. In this article, we take the two projects as case studies and use a reflective methodology to analyse how Zoom technology and a participatory approach to filmmaking were used to enable the group to engage with archives and learn how to tell their stories through film

Could AI Democratise Education? Socio-Technical Imaginaries of an EdTech Revolution

Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Education has been said to have the potential for building more personalised curricula, as well as democratising education worldwide and creating a Renaissance of new ways of teaching and learning. Millions of students are already starting to benefit from the use of these technologies, but millions more around the world are not. If this trend continues, the first delivery of AI in Education could be greater educational inequality, along with a global misallocation of educational resources motivated by the current technological determinism narrative. In this paper, we focus on speculating and posing questions around the future of AI in Education, with the aim of starting the pressing conversation that would set the right foundations for the new generation of education that is permeated by technology. This paper starts by synthesising how AI might change how we learn and teach, focusing specifically on the case of personalised learning companions, and then move to discuss some socio-technical features that will be crucial for avoiding the perils of these AI systems worldwide (and perhaps ensuring their success). This paper also discusses the potential of using AI together with free, participatory and democratic resources, such as Wikipedia, Open Educational Resources and open-source tools. We also emphasise the need for collectively designing human-centered, transparent, interactive and collaborative AI-based algorithms that empower and give complete agency to stakeholders, as well as support new emerging pedagogies. Finally, we ask what would it take for this educational revolution to provide egalitarian and empowering access to education, beyond any political, cultural, language, geographical and learning ability barriers