Irwin B. Levinstein

iSTART: interactive strategy training for active reading and thinking.

Interactive Strategy Training for Active Reading and Thinking (iSTART) is a Web-based application that provides young adolescent to college-age students with high-level reading strategy training to improve comprehension of science texts. iSTART is modeled after an effective, human-delivered intervention called self-explanation reading training (SERT), which trains readers to use active reading strategies to self-explain difficult texts more effectively. To make the training more widely available, the Web-based trainer has been developed. Transforming the training from a human-delivered application to a computer-based one has resulted in a highly interactive trainer that adapts its methods to the performance of the students. The iSTART trainer introduces the strategies in a simulated classroom setting with interaction between three animated characters—an instructor character and two student characters— and the human trainee. Thereafter, the trainee identifies the strategies in the explanations of a student character who is guided by an instructor character. Finally, the trainee practices self-explanation under the guidance of an instructor character. We describe this system and discuss how appropriate feedback is generated.

Assessing the format of the presentation of text in developing a Reading Strategy Assessment Tool (R-SAT)

We are constructing a new computerized test of reading comprehension called the Reading Strategy Assessment Tool (R-SAT). R-SAT elicits and analyzes verbal protocols that readers generate in response to questions as they read texts. We examined whether the amount of information available to the reader when reading and answering questions influenced the extent to which R-SAT accounts for comprehension. We found that R-SAT was most predictive of comprehension when the readers did not have access to the text as they answered questions.

iSTART 2: Improvements for efficiency and effectiveness

AbstractiSTART (interactive strategy training for active reading and thinking) is a Web-based reading strategy trainer that develops students’ ability to self-explain difficult text as a means to improving reading comprehension. Its curriculum consists of modules presented interactively by pedagogical agents: an introduction to the basics of using reading strategies in the context of self-explanation, a demonstration of self-explanation, and a practice module in which the trainee generates self-explanations with feedback on the quality of reading strategies contained in the self-explanations. We discuss the objectives that guided the development of the second version of iSTART toward the goals of increased efficiency for the experimenters and effectiveness in the training. The more pedagogically challenging high school audience is accommodated by (1) a new introduction that increases interactivity, (2) a new demonstration with more and better focused scaffolding, and (3) a new practice module that provides improved feedback and includes a less intense but more extended regimen. Version 2 also benefits experimenters, who can set up and evaluate experiments with less time and effort, because pre- and posttesting has been fully computerized and the process of preparing a text for the practice module has been reduced from more than 1 person-week to about an hour’s time.

A privilege management and enforcement system for distributed resource sharing

The Internet has been identified as one of the most dangerous aspects for an organization in todays information based world. Unauthorized access, misuse, and manipulation of data can create havoc. We have chosen a distributed environment with thousands of users and tens of thousands of resources to illustrate an approach to solve this problem. We have developed a system for easy administration and enforcement of controlled access. Distributed, delegated management of resources is at the core of the project. For portability, the enforcement system is established between the operating system and the user rather than being embedded in the operating system. In particular, we have developed management and access methods for end user access to resources via the Internet including X Windows and World Wide Web based interfaces, and DCE based authentication and authorization. The environment for this project is the Distributed Informatics Computing and Collaborative Environments project associated with the US Department of Energys Energy Science Network. This project is a joint effort between the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF), the Chinese Institute of High Energy Physics, and Old Dominion University.

Evaluating Self-Explanations in iSTART: Word Matching, Latent Semantic Analysis, and Topic Models

iSTART (Interactive Strategy Trainer for Active Reading and Thinking) is a webbased, automated tutor designed to help students become better readers via multimedia technologies. It provides young adolescent to college-aged students with a program of self-explanation and reading strategy training [19] called Self-Explanation Reading Training, or SERT [17], [21], [24], [25]. The reading strategies include (a) comprehension monitoring, being aware of one’s understanding of the text; (b) paraphrasing, or restating the text in different words; (c) elaboration, using prior knowledge or experiences to understand the text (i.e., domain-specific knowledge-based inferences) or common sense, using logic to understand the text (i.e., domain-general knowledge based inferences); (d) predictions, predicting what the text will say next; and (e) bridging, understanding the relation between separate sentences of the text. The overall process is called “self-explanation” because the reader is encouraged to explain difficult text to him- or herself. iSTART consists of three modules: Introduction, Demonstration, and Practice. In the last module, students practice using reading strategies by typing self-explanations of sentences. The system evaluates each self-explanation and then provides appropriate feedback to the student. If the explanation is irrelevant or too short, the student is required to add more information. Otherwise, the feedback is based on the level of overall quality.

A privilege management system for a secure network

Modern research projects may involve dozens of geographically distributed collaborators who access distributed information, applications workstations and devices. We are developing an architecture and methods for distributed, decentralized privilege management and enforcement with regard to access to distributed mass storage data and information via the Internet. Our approach does not require modification of the supporting operating system yet provides a more flexible and finer grained privilege system. We use X-windows and World Wide Web based interfaces in secure environments which support authentication and authorization. Toward this end, we have established secure distributed computing environment (DCE) networks at two sites and implemented selected features of the system. In this paper we report the design and implementation details of the project and summarize the issues that need to be resolved in future. The initial work is part of a larger Distributed Informatics Computing and Collaborative Environments (DICCE) project associated with the US Department of Energys Energy Science Network (ESnet). The particular project is a joint effort between the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF), the Chinese Institute of High Energy Physics, and Old Dominion University.

Preposition senses: generalized disambiguation model

Our previous study on disambiguating the preposition “with” (using WordNet for hypernym and meronym relations, LCS for verb and preposition lexical information, and features of head and complement) looked promising enough to warrant study for other prepositions. Through investigation of ten frequently used prepositions, this paper describes general senses of prepositions and sense-case definitions, introduces a novel generalized sense disambiguation model, and demonstrates how this benefits a paraphrase recognition system.

Mobile computing: Opportunities for optimization research

The last 20 years have seen a tremendous growth in mobile computing and wireless communications and services. Most of the research in mobile computing has addressed the fundamental engineering issues involved in building and exploiting mobile and wireless systems, ranging from cellular, to satellite, to ad hoc and, more recently, to sensor networks. On the other hand, optimization research in mobile computing and wireless communications has received, in relative terms, less attention and was related mostly to optimizing the performance of individual communication protocols. Supporting mobility in all its aspects from cellular services to multimedia brings to the fore new problems and opportunities for optimization research. This paper is a survey of some of the promising areas in which optimization can be used to solve mobile computing problems.

Computer Productivity Initiative

Over the last three decades computer science has evolved into a mature and experimentally oriented discipline with a well defined curriculum. Only recently have we come to realize that as a discipline computer science must reach beyond its own subject area to applications in other disciplines in order to stay relevant. Most computer science curricula teach principles and programming skills in isolation from an application perspective, provide limited laboratory experience, and introduce inadequate integration with non-CS components. The Computer Productivity Initiative, described in this paper, proposes to alleviate these problems by integrating a multi-year project into the curriculum. The project involves courses normally taken in three different years of the curriculum. It includes hardware and software issues and also addresses engineering, business, and other non-CS issues. The initiative uses prototyping and simulations in the development of specifications for an integrated television communication and display computer system. The students apply principles of productivity and make extensive use of leading-edge technologies both in the process of the project development and the product being developed. They hone essential career-oriented skills in the areas of management, formal presentations, and group problem solving. This paper is a report of work in progress. It emphasizes the implementation issues we are facing and the integration of evaluation into our curriculum development. It describes our preparation for the dissemination of a model curriculum when we are able to demonstrate that the approach is adaptable to CS departments across the country.

PMES: Privilege management and enforcement system for secure distributed resource sharing

PMES provides privilege management and enforcement methods for end user access to distributed mass storage data and information via the Global Internet using X-windows interfaces, and supporting authentication and encryption. It permits anyone owning or managing a resource (not only a system administrator) to control fine-grained privileges on a variety of networked resources. The system consists of a Java-based privilege management interface, a server which stores privilege information, and an enforcement system. In this paper, we describe the system, emphasizing the the implementation of the management interface, the server, and the interaction of the two.