Vania Dimitrova

User Modeling, Adaptation, and Personalization

Interactive technologies pervade every aspect of modern life. Web sites, mobile devices, household gadgets, automotive controls, aircraft flight decks; everywhere you look, people are interacting with technologies. This trend is set to continue as we move towards a world comprising Smart Cities built around the Internet of Things. Unfortunately, much of the rhetoric surrounding this dawning age of ubiquitous and embedded computing fails to appropriately consider the people at the centre of it. These people are embodied social agents with motivations, emotions, capabilities, capacities, proclivities and predilections. Technological imaginings around the Internet of Things are often steeped in generalities or idealised scenarios of use. Such imaginings typically forget that design is always about meeting particular peoples’ needs in particular contexts. From concept to ideation to prototype and evaluation, the design of interactive technologies and systems that are intended for people should start with some understanding of who the users will be, what tasks and experiences they are aiming for, and what the circumstances, conditions or context(s) are at play. In this talk, I will discuss a simple people-centric framework devised with my colleagues and coauthors to inform the way we think about design, the ABCS of designing interactive systems. A descriptive guide rather than a prescriptive checklist, the framework draws on basic research in ergonomics, psychology and user modeling. It is intended to focus design thinking about people as the users of interactive, computational systems. It is intended to support us as the designers of interactive technologies as we scope, draft and iterate on the design space of imagined interactive experiences. Using examples from my own work, I will illustrate how this framework has been explicitly and/or tacitly applied in the design, development and evaluation of interactive, multimedia systems. In particular, I will consider how this framework is currently being applied to rethinking the concept of personalization.

CourseVis: A graphical student monitoring tool for supporting instructors in web-based distance courses

This paper presents CourseVis, a system that takes a novel approach of using Web log data generated by course management systems (CMSs) to help instructors become aware of what is happening in distance learning classes. Specifically, techniques from information visualization (IV) are employed to graphically render complex, multidimensional student tracking data. Several graphical representations are generated to help distance learning instructors get a better understanding of social, behavioural, and cognitive aspects related to learners. The evaluation of CourseVis shows that it can help instructors to quickly identify tendencies in their classes and discover individuals that might need special attention. This suggests that the effectiveness of CMSs can be improved by integrating IV techniques to generate appropriate graphical representations, similar to those produced in CourseVis.

Visualising student tracking data to support instructors in web-based distance education

This paper presents a novel approach of using web log data generated by course management systems (CMS) to help instructors become aware of what is happening in distance learning classes. Specifically, techniques from Information Visualization are used to graphically render complex, multidimensional student tracking data collected by CMS. A system, called CourseVis, illustrates the proposed approach. Graphical representations from the use of CourseVis to visualise data from a java on-line distance course ran with WebCT are presented. Findings from the evaluation of CourseVis are presented, and it is argued that CourseVis can help teachers become aware of some social, behavioural, and cognitive aspects related to distance learners. Using graphical representations of student tracking data, instructors can identify tendencies in their classes, or quickly discover individuals that need special attention.

Sustaining TEL: From Innovation to learning and practice

Wolpers, M., Kirschner, P. A., Scheffel, M., Lindstaedt, S., & Dimitrova, V. (Eds.) (2010). Sustaining TEL: From Innovation to learning and practice. Proceedings of the 5th European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning, EC-TEL 2010. September, 28 - October, 1, 2010, Barcelona, Spain. Berlin: Springer Verlag.Scaffolding is a well-known approach to bridge the gap between novice and expert capabilities in a discovery-oriented learning environment. This paper discusses a set of knowledge representations referred to as Learning Spaces (LSs) that can be used to support learners in acquiring conceptual knowledge of system behaviour. The LSs are logically self-contained, meaning that models created at a specific LS can be simulated. Working with the LSs provides scaffolding for learners in two ways. First, each LS provides a restricted set of representational primitives to express knowledge, which focus the learner’s knowledge construction process. Second, the logical consequences of an expression derived upon simulating, provide learners a reflective instrument for evaluating the status of their understanding, to which they can react accordingly. The work presented here is part of the DynaLearn project, which builds an Interactive Learning Environment to study a constructive approach to having learners develop a qualitative understanding of how systems behave. The work presented here thus focuses on tools to support educational research. Consequently, user-oriented evaluation of these tools is not a part of this paper.

Applying Interactive Open Learner Models to Learning Technical Terminology

Our work explores an interactive open learner modelling (IOLM) approach where learner diagnosis is considered as an interactive process involving both a computer system and a learner that play symmetrical (to a certain extent) roles and construct together the learner model. The paper presents an application of IOLM for diagnosing and fostering a learners conceptual understanding in a terminological domain. Based on an experimental study, we discuss computational and educational benefits of IOLM in terms of improving the quality of the obtained learner model and fostering reflective thinking.

Integrating open user modeling and learning content management for the semantic web

The paper describes an ontology-based approach for integrating interactive user modeling and learning content management to deal with typical adaptation problems, such as cold start and dynamics of the users knowledge, in the context of the Semantic Web. An integrated OntoAIMS system is presented and its viability discussed based on user studies. The work demonstrates some novel aspects, such as (a) ontological approach for integration of methods for eliciting and utilizing of user models; (b) improved adaptation functionality resulted from that integration, validated with real users; (c) support of interoperability and reusability of adaptive components.

Adaptive feedback generation to support teachers in web-based distance education

This work examines the application of user-adapted technologies to address problems experienced in web-based distance education. We have proposed an approach to support distance learning instructors by offering advice that points at problems faced by students and suggests possible activities to address these problems. The paper describes an original feedback generation framework which utilises student, group and class models derived from tracking data in web course management systems, and follows a taxonomy of feedback categories to recognise situations that are brought to the instructors’ attention. The results of an empirical study in an online learning course point at benefits of the generated feedback to both instructors and students. Teachers can get a better understanding of their students by knowing what problems they may be facing, when they are behind or ahead of their peers, who can help them and how, and what roles can be assigned in discussion forums. This, in turn, can have a positive effect on students who can receive feedback tailored to their needs and problems. The evaluation study points at issues that can be related in general to planning empirical evaluations of user-adapted systems in realistic web-based learning settings.

Supporting domain experts to construct conceptual ontologies: A holistic approach

Abstract A recent trend in ontology engineering research aims at encouraging the active participation of domain experts in the ontology creation process. Ontology construction methodologies together with appropriate tools and technologies, such as controlled natural languages, semantic wikis, intelligent user interfaces and social computing, are being proposed to enable the direct input from domain experts and to minimize the dependency on knowledge engineers at every step of ontology development. The time is ripe for consolidating methodological and technological advancements to create intuitive ontology engineering tools which can make Semantic Web technologies usable by a wide variety of people without formal knowledge engineering skills. A novel, holistic approach to facilitate the involvements of domain experts in the ontology authoring process is presented here. It integrates (i) an ontology construction methodology, (ii) the use of a controlled natural language, and (iii) appropriate tool support. The integrated approach is illustrated with the design, implementation and evaluation of ROO – a unique ontology authoring tool which combines intelligent techniques to assist domain experts in constructing ontologies. The benefits and limitations of the proposed approach are analyzed based on user studies with ROO. A broader discussion is provided pointing at issues to be taken into account when assisting the involvement of domain experts in ontology construction.

Rabbit to OWL: ontology authoring with a CNL-based tool

Recent work on ontology engineering has seen the adoption of controlled natural languages to ease the process of ontology authoring. However, CNL-based tools still require good knowledge engineering skills to be used efficiently. In this paper presents ROO, an ontology authoring tool that has been designed to cater for the needs of domain experts with little or no ontology engineering experience. ROO combines a CNL-based interface with appropriate tool support based on an ontology construction methodology. We focus on how this tool support is provided in ROO by using and implementing novel aspects of the Rabbit controlled natural language and we refer to an evaluation study that provides empirical evidence in support of using CNL-based techniques to assist ontology authors.

Using student and group models to support teachers in web-based distance education

The paper illustrates how student modeling and advice generation methods can be used to address problems experienced in Web-based distance education courses. We have developed the TADV (Teacher ADVisor) framework which builds student models based on the tracking data collected by a course management system and uses these models to generate advice to the course instructors, so that they can improve their feedback and guidance to distance students. The paper introduces TADV, describes how student, group, and class models are used for generating advice to the teachers, and discusses the viability of this approach based on an evaluative study with users.