Automated Consulting for Extending User Expertise in Interactive Environments: A Task Centered Approach

Interactive computing environments provide facilities to support and assist the range from novice to expert users, but casual and novice users tend to rely on a small starter set of commands. This proposal for thesis work addresses this problem through the implementation of GENIE (GENerated Informative Explanations), a system that answers users' questions about how to accomplish tasks in the domain of Berkeley Unix Mail. This work unifies three new perspectives on consulting. First, the decision on what to tell a user, including the "best" plan for the user's goal, is based on an evaluation of the user's current computational goal, and the goals the user has attempted in the past. Secondly, the decision on how to phrase the answer relies on a careful mixture of tutoring strategies. Finally, both an expert and user model are represented as declarative structures of goals with alternative plans that include explicit semantic relationships between plans

Finding a Better Way: Choosing and Explaining Alternative Plans

Many users of interactive computing environments have been confronted with the dilemma: "I know there must be a better way to do what I'm doing, but 1 don't know what it is." This paper describes a solution to this problem and several related ones through an automated consultant called GENIE, a system that answers users' questions about how to accomplish tasks. Our approach is based on the principle that the best plan to tell a user is not always computationally optimal, but is the plan most suitable to what the user already knows in the current context. To find a best plan, GENIE explores a declarative representation of goals that explicitly encodes alternative plans for goals, and the semantic relationships between alternatives. Both an Expert and a User model are represented in this manner, which allows us to abandon stereotypes of user expertise and functional difficulty of the domain constructs. The criteria for each choice of sub-step of a plan is based on two sets of heuristics applied to the semantic relationships encoded between plans. The first set is dependent upon what the user is currently doing, the second on what the user has done in the past

Tutoring That Responds to User Questions and Provides Enrichment

An aspect of human tutoring that epitomizes individualized instruction, is the ability to take advantage of a situation to teach something new. This type of tutoring can be characterized as enrichment as opposed to tutoring that is in response to a particular need. At Columbia, we have developed a model for consulting in interactive environments that permits answers to queries to be both in response to a user's questions and as enrichment. Our demonstration system GENIE (Generated Explanations for Consulting in Interactive Environments) produces answers in the domain of Berkeley Unix Mail. Our emphasis is on skill rather than factual acquisition. Consequently, GENIE is able to answer questions about alternative plans for goals, and whether plans satisfy goals. We abandon stereotypes of both functionality and expertise, and choose the best plan for a goal based on the current context and what the user has previously done. Four tutoring strategies are used both in response and as enrichment. They are reminding, introducing, clarifying distinctions and elucidating misconceptions

An Automated Consultant for Interactive Environments

Interactive computing environments provide facilities intended to support and assist the range from novice to expert users, but casual users tend to get trapped in the starter set of commands. We have developed a rule-based technology for providing on-line assistance calibrated to both the task at hand and the user's past experience using the system. Such assistance helps users to progress to more advanced features. We present our automated consultant and describe its application to a practical domain, the Berkeley Unix mail system

Analyzing User Plans to Produce Informative Responses by a Programmer's Consultant

One problem in current help systems for programming utility packages is their inability to provide information within the context of the task at hand. The relationship of a user's goal to the user's plan to accomplish that goal is not taken into account. Furthermore, even a goal/plan based help system should be informative by following rules of discourse. This paper puts established rules of discourse into the context of a programming environment, and describes how a report based on an analysis of a user's intended goal and stated plan can be generated. The programming environment under discussion is a programmer's tool kit for graphically exploring complex hierarchical data structures. A program that we have developed called the Plan Analyst is described that finds the relationship between a users intended goal and stated plan by mapping the goal to the functions of the tool kit. The report generated is informative because discourse rules have been in coded in the knowledge representation that is searched by the Plan Analyst. The intent of this paper is to demonstrate the potential for applying methods of discourse behavior from Natural Language Processing research to 3D interactive programming environment

Automated Tutoring in Interactive Environments: A Task Centered Approach

Tutoring in interactive computing environments is sometimes more properly understood as consulting. A tutor's implied curriculum may be adaptable to the user's knowledge and experience but still not meet the user's immediate needs -- to get some task done. A consultant however, can dynamically adapt to address the task at hand. We present a user's goal-centered approach to tutoring in interactive environments, and describe how we automate certain tutoring strategies appropriate for consulting behavior. We have implemented our approach in GENIE, a question answering system for the Berkeley Unix Mail system. We focus on the pedagogical strategies employed by GENIE to best meet the user's immediate needs

Creative Computation for CS1 and K9-12

We present the design and development of a new approach to teaching the introductory computing course (CS1), at both the college-level as well as K9-12, using the context of digital art and creative computation. Creative computation is a highly interdisciplinary area combining theory and methodology from computer science and engineering with aesthetic principles and creative practices from the arts. Using the Processing programming language, students create a portfolio of aesthetic visual designs that employ basic programming constructs and structures typically taught in traditional CS1 courses. The goal of this approach is to bring the excitement, creativity, and innovation fostered by the context of creative coding. We have developed a web portal containing an extensive set of resources for adoption by others. A comprehensive textbook has also been published in 2013 [Greenberg et al 2013]. We present results from a comparative study involving multiple offerings of the new course at the two lead institutions as well as several other partner institutions. We also describe the success of bringing creative computation via Processing into two very different high schools that span the range of possibilities of grades 9-12 in American education. We report on how contextualized computing that supports integration of media arts, design, and computer science can successfully motivate students to learn foundations of programming and come back for more. The work of two high school teachers with divergent pedagogical styles is presented. They successfully adapted a college-level creative computation curriculum to their individual school cultures providing a catalyst for significant increases in enrollment and female participation in high school computer science

Creative Computation for CS1 and K9-12

We present the design and development of a new approach to teaching the introductory computing course (CS1), at both the college-level as well as K9-12, using the context of digital art and creative computation. Creative computation is a highly interdisciplinary area combining theory and methodology from computer science and engineering with aesthetic principles and creative practices from the arts. Using the Processing programming language, students create a portfolio of aesthetic visual designs that employ basic programming constructs and structures typically taught in traditional CS1 courses. The goal of this approach is to bring the excitement, creativity, and innovation fostered by the context of creative coding. We have developed a web portal containing an extensive set of resources for adoption by others. A comprehensive textbook has also been published in 2013 [Greenberg et al 2013]. We present results from a comparative study involving multiple offerings of the new course at the two lead institutions as well as several other partner institutions. We also describe the success of bringing creative computation via Processing into two very different high schools that span the range of possibilities of grades 9-12 in American education. We report on how contextualized computing that supports integration of media arts, design, and computer science can successfully motivate students to learn foundations of programming and come back for more. The work of two high school teachers with divergent pedagogical styles is presented. They successfully adapted a college-level creative computation curriculum to their individual school cultures providing a catalyst for significant increases in enrollment and female participation in high school computer science

Creative Computation in High School

In this paper we describe the success of bringing Creative Computation via Processing into two very different high schools that span the range of possibilities of grades 9-12 in American education. Creative Computation is an emerging discipline that requires a thorough grounding in both media arts and computing. We report on how contextualized computing that supports integration of media arts, design, and computer science can successfully attract and motivate students to learn foundations of programming and come back for more. The work of two high school teachers with divergent pedagogical styles is presented. They successfully adapted a college-level Creative Computation curriculum to their individual school cultures providing a catalyst for significant increases in total enrollment as well as female participation in high school computer science

Creative Computation in High School

In this paper we describe the success of bringing Creative Computation via Processing into two very different high schools that span the range of possibilities of grades 9-12 in American education. Creative Computation is an emerging discipline that requires a thorough grounding in both media arts and computing. We report on how contextualized computing that supports integration of media arts, design, and computer science can successfully attract and motivate students to learn foundations of programming and come back for more. The work of two high school teachers with divergent pedagogical styles is presented. They successfully adapted a college-level Creative Computation curriculum to their individual school cultures providing a catalyst for significant increases in total enrollment as well as female participation in high school computer science