Storyfier: Exploring Vocabulary Learning Support with Text Generation Models

Vocabulary learning support tools have widely exploited existing materials, e.g., stories or video clips, as contexts to help users memorize each target word. However, these tools could not provide a coherent context for any target words of learners' interests, and they seldom help practice word usage. In this paper, we work with teachers and students to iteratively develop Storyfier, which leverages text generation models to enable learners to read a generated story that covers any target words, conduct a story cloze test, and use these words to write a new story with adaptive AI assistance. Our within-subjects study (N=28) shows that learners generally favor the generated stories for connecting target words and writing assistance for easing their learning workload. However, in the read-cloze-write learning sessions, participants using Storyfier perform worse in recalling and using target words than learning with a baseline tool without our AI features. We discuss insights into supporting learning tasks with generative models.Comment: To appear at the 2023 ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST); 16 pages (7 figures, 23 tables

Tracing the Scenarios in Scenario-Based Product Design: a study to support scenario generation

Scenario-based design originates from the human-computer interaction and\ud software engineering disciplines, and continues to be adapted for product development. Product development differs from software development in the former’s more varied context of use, broader characteristics of users and more tangible solutions. The possible use of scenarios in product design is therefore broader and more challenging. Existing design methods that involve scenarios can be employed in many different stages of the product design process. However, there is no proficient overview that discusses a\ud scenario-based product design process in its full extent. The purposes of creating scenarios and the evolution of scenarios from their original design data are often not obvious, although the results from using scenarios are clearly visible. Therefore, this paper proposes to classify possible scenario uses with their purpose, characteristics and supporting design methods. The classification makes explicit different types of scenarios and their relation to one another. Furthermore, novel scenario uses can be referred or added to the classification to develop it in parallel with the scenario-based design\ud practice. Eventually, a scenario-based product design process could take inspiration for creating scenarios from the classification because it provides detailed characteristics of the scenario

Scoping a vision for formative e-assessment: a project report for JISC

Assessment is an integral part of teaching and learning. If the relationship between teaching and learning were causal, i. e. if students always mastered the intended learning outcomes of a particular sequence of instruction, assessment would be superfluous. Experience and research suggest this is not the case: what is learnt can often be quite different from what is taught. Formative assessment is motivated by a concern with the elicitation of relevant information about student understanding and / or achievement, its interpretation and an exploration of how it can lead to actions that result in better learning. In the context of a policy drive towards technology-enhanced approaches to teaching and learning, the question of the role of digital technologies is key and it is the latter on which this project particularly focuses. The project and its deliverables have been informed by recent and relevant literature, in particular recent work by Black andIn this work, they put forward a framework which suggests that assessment for learning their term for formative assessment can be conceptualised as consisting of a number of aspects and five keystrategies. The key aspects revolve around the where the learner is going, where the learner is right now and how she can get there and examines the role played by the teacher, peers and the learner. Language: English Keywords: assessments, case studies, design patterns, e-assessmen

Life editing: Third-party perspectives on lifelog content

Lifelog collections digitally capture and preserve personal experiences and can be mined to reveal insights and understandings of individual significance. These rich data sources also offer opportunities for learning and discovery by motivated third parties. We employ a custom-designed storytelling application in constructing meaningful lifelog summaries from third-party perspectives. This storytelling initiative was implemented as a core component in a university media-editing course. We present promising results from a preliminary study conducted to evaluate the utility and potential of our approach in creatively interpreting a unique experiential dataset

Narrative-based writing for coherent technical documents

Narrative-based writing is a technique that was developed to address the lack of support for document coherence. The technique depends on the production of a story-like executive summary of the document called a DN (Document Narrative). This is then analysed using a discourse theory called Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) which helps further to correct any lapses in coherence in the DN before proceeding to use it to write the document. Previous papers have described the technique briefly, alongside discussions of the ongoing software development to incorporate narrative support in writing tools. It has now become apparent that the technique itself needs to be explained in greater detail. This is the purpose of this paper. Here, narrative-based writing and the reasoning behind it is described. This is followed by a description of a user experiment conducted in May 2006 to evaluate narrative-based writing and discover areas in which it could be improved. The positive feedback from the volunteers has motivated us to continue to refine and simplify the technique

The Chawton House Experience - Augmenting the Grounds of a Historic Manor House

Museum research is a burgeoning area of research where ubiquitous computing has already made an impact in enhancing user experiences. The goal of the Chawton House project is to extend this work by introducing ubicomp not to a museum as such, but a historic English manor house and its grounds. This presents a number of novel challenges relating to the kinds of visitors, the nature of visits, the specific character of the estate, the creation of a persistent and evolving system, and the process of developing it together with Chawton House staff

Player agency in interactive narrative: audience, actor & author

The question motivating this review paper is, how can computer-based interactive narrative be used as a constructivist learn- ing activity? The paper proposes that player agency can be used to link interactive narrative to learner agency in constructivist theory, and to classify approaches to interactive narrative. The traditional question driving research in interactive narrative is, ‘how can an in- teractive narrative deal with a high degree of player agency, while maintaining a coherent and well-formed narrative?’ This question derives from an Aristotelian approach to interactive narrative that, as the question shows, is inherently antagonistic to player agency. Within this approach, player agency must be restricted and manip- ulated to maintain the narrative. Two alternative approaches based on Brecht’s Epic Theatre and Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed are reviewed. If a Boalian approach to interactive narrative is taken the conflict between narrative and player agency dissolves. The question that emerges from this approach is quite different from the traditional question above, and presents a more useful approach to applying in- teractive narrative as a constructivist learning activity