Is it possible to study the ergonomic affordances offered by a system designed for educational aims and their transformation into cultural affordances? To this purpose, what references can we adopt? This work describes the theoretical framework used to realise this study referring to AlNuSet, a system realised within the EC ReMath project to…

This dissertation studies how people describe emotions with language and how computers can simulate this descriptive behavior. Although many non-human animals can express their current emotions as social signals, only humans can communicate about emotions symbolically. This symbolic communication of emotion allows us to talk about emotions that we…

The use of information technology is a vital part of everyday life, but for a person with functional impairments, technology interaction may be difficult at best. Information technology is commonly designed to meet the needs of a theoretical "normal" user. However, there is no such thing as a "normal" user. A user's capabilities will vary over…

The tremendous effectiveness of intelligent tutoring systems is due in large part to their interactivity. However, when learners are free to choose the extent to which they interact with a tutoring system, not all learners do so actively. This paper examines a study with a natural language tutorial dialogue system for computer science, in which…

Since the days Internet traffic proliferated, measurement, monitoring and analysis of network traffic have been critical to not only the basic understanding of large networks, but also to seek improvements in resource management, traffic engineering and security. At the current times traffic in wireless local and wide area networks are facing…

The main goal of this research study was to develop a conceptual model for the design of public library websites for teens (TLWs) that would enable designers and librarians to create library websites that better suit teens' information needs and practices. It bridges a gap in the research literature between user interface design in human-computer…

In this thesis, we study the importance of background knowledge in relation extraction systems. We not only demonstrate the benefits of leveraging background knowledge to improve the systems' performance but also propose a principled framework that allows one to effectively incorporate knowledge into statistical machine learning models for…

Natural Language Generation (NLG) is the process of generating natural language text from an input, which is a communicative goal and a database or knowledge base. Informally, the architecture of a standard NLG system consists of the following modules (Reiter and Dale, 2000): content determination, sentence planning (or microplanning) and surface…

I'm talking about the ways we represent ourselves and our world. I've put some thoughts on the topic together here--a gathering that enacts new media creating and takes up conceptual layers like metaphors, models, and composing. The primary sources are videos from the Get a Mac campaign, aka I'm a Mac; I'm a PC ads. Posthuman concepts blending…

This paper presents an interactive module for learning both the fundamental and practical issues of servo systems. This module, developed using Simulink in conjunction with the Matlab graphical user interface (Matlab-GUI) tool, is used to supplement conventional lectures in control engineering and robotics subjects. First, the paper introduces the…

While many studies have demonstrated that conversational tutoring systems have a positive effect on learning, the amount of manual effort required to author, design, and tune dialogue behaviors remains a major barrier to widespread deployment and adoption of these systems. Such dialogue systems must not only understand student speech, but must…

This paper presents an agent-based educational environment to teach argument analysis (ALES). The idea is based on the Argumentation Interchange Format Ontology (AIF)using "Walton Theory". ALES uses different mining techniques to manage a highly structured arguments repertoire. This repertoire was designed, developed and implemented by us. Our aim…

Purpose: Competition for resources appears to be increasing at a time of political, security (including energy, food and climate) and economic change; leading to potential collapse. The purpose of this conceptual paper is to examine the impact of policies exercised at the macro level on methods and processes applied at the micro level through, for…

A method is presented to calculate accurate approximations to the half-life values of elimination systems modelled by one compartment. The major advantage of this method is that only algebraic mathematical operations are required. The results will be of value not only to students beginning the study of elimination kinetics, but also to…

This is the fourth and final installment in a series of articles presenting a new outlook on the methods of instructional design. These articles examine the nature of the process of instructional design and are meant to stimulate discussion about the roles of designers in the fields of instructional design, the learning sciences, and interaction…