1,721,097 research outputs found
Scenarios in a serious game for training communication skills
No full textCommunication skills are designated as one the keys skills for the 21st century. Practice by training on the job or in role play with a simulated character are effective ways to learn communication skills. In serious games to practice communication skills, a player performs a dialogue with a virtual character to learn and practice a communication skill in a particular situation, for example ‘Breaking bad news’.
In my dissertation, I consider three aspects of a serious game, namely: develop generic components and tools; analyse learning aspects and game mechanics; and evaluate and improve pedagogical aspects. I investigate these aspects in the context of Communicate, a serious game for practicing communication skills.
We successfully created a generic dialogue integration component that can be used to develop and integrate dialogue scenarios seamlessly in a serious game. We also successfully created a smells tool that a scenario author can use to detect potential scoring problems in a scenario.
We used information within a scenario to create a scenario specific corpus and use this corpus to match open text input from a player during gameplay. We call our method scenario specific corpus method (SSCM). We evaluated SSCM against generic Natural language processing (NLP) methods and found that SSCM slightly outperformed generic NLP methods for matched text but underperformed for unmatched text.
We compared student feedback to various interventions in blended teaching. Our results suggest that in designing and employing serious games, it is crucial to investigate pedagogical aspects such as peer teaching
Assisting End Users in Workflow Systems
No full textIn today's society, almost every company and institution employs some kind of workflow automation. Hospitals employ software that automates health care processes. The coastal guard uses workflow software to assist in search and rescue operations. Naval ships use workflow automation software to manage people, resources and mission goals.
Before automation, users knew the process by heart, and knew how their choices influenced the process. Workflow systems hide the flow of processes behind interfaces. For end users, it is not always clear how decisions influence the progress of a task. Another factor in the decision process of an end user is the information available. How can a user be sure that he or she took all information into consideration before reaching a decision? One way to provide users with more information about their current situation is to provide them with next-step hints. These hints are based on their current situation: their position in the workflow and the data in the system. In this dissertation, I attempt to answer the question, how can we provide end users with next-step hints to aid them in making decisions?
The answer to that question is found by applying of techniques from intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) and program analysis. Previous work on ITS strategies inspired the first approach to generate next-step hints. By extending the original program with additional information, it can be viewed as a rule-based problem, making it susceptible to generic AI search and solving algorithms. The second approach comes from program analysis. By employing symbolic execution, next-step hints are automatically calculated, without any changes to the original code.
The application of both techniques results in two next-step hints systems. One system, aided by the programmer, the other fully automatic. In developing the automatic system, a formal Task-oriented Programming semantics is also developed, including a symbolic execution semantics. Both systems are proven to be sound and complete. They are both implemented, too, showing that they work in practice. Providing next-step hints to end users is crucial in improving the quality of decisions. It helps end users by giving insight into the effects of their choices, and makes sure that all data is taken into consideration
Automated intelligent feedback in university statistics education
No full textIntroductory statistics courses are both essential and challenging for many university students. Students struggle to understand the abstract concepts involved, such as significance level and p-value, and the role of uncertainty in statistical procedures. Appropriate feedback could support students in gaining understanding, but is difficult to provide for teachers, since the number of students enrolled in such courses is often large. In this thesis, a solution is sought in automated feedback in an Intelligent Tutoring System, guided by the question: How can automated feedback support students in higher education in gaining understanding of statistics? In two first-year introductory statistics courses for social-sciences students, two feedback types were implemented: inner loop feedback on steps in hypothesis-testing tasks by a domain reasoner and outer loop feedback over series of tasks in the form of inspectable student models.
Separate studies focused on the design, implementation, and student’s use of the two feedback types. Design was based on promising paradigms, such as model-tracing and constraint-based modeling for the domain reasoner. Students’ use of the feedback was evaluated by investigating their feedback-seeking and decision-making behavior. Finally, the influence of both feedback types on student’s course performance was assessed. Lower-achieving students were found to benefit from student models, and students who had had enough time to familiarize themselves with the feedback were found to benefit from the domain reasoner. Hence, the combination of feedback types has the potential to provide many students with useful guidance in the process of learning statistics
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Effectieve computerapplicaties:vergelijk de didactiek, niet het domein
No full textWie inzicht wil krijgen in wat een computerapplicatie voor het onderwijs effectief maakt, moet zich niet beperken tot een domein, maar insteken op het didactische principe van de applicaties. Dan blijkt dat de manier waarop de leerling ondersteuning krijgt bepalend is voor de effectiviteit van een computerapplicatie – of deze nu gaat over rekenen of over taal. Applicaties die de stappen van de leerling van feedback voorzien blijken het meest effectief
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
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