Ichiro Fujinaga

If it can do music, it can do anything: Music and digital libraries (2009)

 

Ichiro Fujinaga is an Associate Professor in Music Technology Area at the Schulich School of Music at McGill University.  He has a Bachelor's degree in Music/Percussion and Mathematics from the University of Alberta, and a Master's degree in Music Theory, and a Ph.D. in Music Technology from McGill University.  In 2003-4, he was the Acting Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT) at McGill.  IN 2002-3, he was the Chair of the Music Technology Area at the School of Music.  Before that he was a faculty member of the Computer Music Department at the Peabody Conservatory of Music of the John Hopkins University.  Research interests include music theory, machine learning, music perception, digital signal processing, genetic algorithms, and music information acquisition, preservation, and retrieval.  He is also a member of Montreal's traditional Japanese drumming group "Arashi Daiko" and tours with them across North America and Europe.

Eric Hervet and Mustapha Kardouchi

Art Object Recognition by Image Processing based on Color and Hidden Markov models (2009)

 

Nowadays, most of the daily information we use is digital, whether in the arts or at our work. However, images are often stored in huge, unclassified databases where it is extremely difficult for people to search for images with specific or desirable features. For example, an artist or an art teacher interested in painting may want to retrieve images with a specific color hue or a particular texture. Therefore, it is necessary to provide users with a searching tool that helps them retrieve images according to specific characteristics.

This work proposes a searching tool based on image colors. The approach involves two steps:

−Color features extracted using color histograms: It computes the statistical distribution of the colors in an image. In order to take into account both color distribution and spatial information, weighted histograms are used. Weights (usually local laplacian or entropy) are needed to compute the probability of a color in its neighbourhood. Weighted histograms are an efficient way to retrieve similar images according to their color information.

−A training model based on HMM (Hidden Markov Models): Markov models constitute the most successful approach developed for modeling the statistical variations in temporal pattern recognition applications. They have been proved very efficient in speech recognition, and are nowadays implemented in recent operating systems (Vista, MacOS, Linux). A Markov process is a system which can be described at any time as a set of N distinct states. In the case of color images, Markov states correspond to color packets. Indeed, a color image usually contains only hundreds or a few thousands different colors among a theoretical choice of 16,777,216 (typical RGB color model). This means many colors are missing, and this information is used to compute packets of continuous colors. HMM-based systems must first be trained and validated with data samples in order to acquire their probabilities of transitions between states. Once trained and validated, the system can be used to classify learned or new patterns.

This method has been tested on the image database COIL (Columbia Object Image Library) which contains 7,200 images of 100 different objects, each object being viewed under 72 different angles. The optimal results were obtained by using one third of the images of each object for the training phase, and the rest for validation. More specifically, every image is previously indexed by its color histogram information from which the set of color packets is used as Markov states. The rate recognition success on COIL reaches 90%, meaning that 90% of the images are correctly assigned to their corresponding object. In order to improve the recognition rate, we plan to extract other visual image features like shapes or textures as well as to be able to process databases with higher number of images.

 

Eric Hervet, Ph.D. and Mustapha Kardouchi, Ph.D. are part of the Département d’informatique at the Université de Moncton.

Bruce Homer

The icon effect: Using iconic visual representation to support learners with low prior knowledge (2011)

 

For the past several years, we have been investigating effective ways to present visual information in computer-based multimedia learning environments, particularly for low prior knowledge learners. Based on the semiotic theory of Peirce (1955) and relevant developmental and educational theory (Deacon, 1997; Homer & Nelson, 2005), we have identified iconic representations as being particularly effective for low prior knowledge learners. In this context, icons are representational signs whose meaning is based on some physical semblance to the object they represent (e.g., using a flame to represent heat). In our work with scientific visualizations, we have found that the addition of iconic representations to simulations supports learners with low prior knowledge in the relevant content area. This “icon effect” is fairly robust, and has been found in a diverse array of learners including Korean middle school students (Lee, Plass & Homer, 2006), American high school students in both rural (Plass et al., 2009; Homer & Plass, 2010) and urban (Homer et al., 2011) settings. Recent research, however, suggests that the icon effect may be mediated by other factors, such as cognitive development (Homer & Plass, 2010). In the current paper, we review the theoretical basis and empirical support for the icon effect. We conclude with an outline for future research and discussion of the practical implication of the icon effect for designing educational materials, including possibilities of faded and adaptive scaffolding to support the broadest range of learners.

 

Bruce D. Homer is an Associate Professor of Educational Psychology in the Learning, Development and Instruction subprogram at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. He is director of the Child Interactive Learning and Development (CHILD) Lab. He is also training director for the Interdisciplinary Postdoctoral Research Training (IPoRT) program, and Director of Research at the Consortium for Research and Evaluation of Advanced Technologies in Education (CREATE). Dr. Homer’s research examines the ways in which children acquire and use cultural tools to store and transmit knowledge (e.g., language, literacy, and information technologies), and how these tools transform developmental and learning processes. Of particular interest is how development and learning affect the ways in which mental representations are formed. Dr. Homer’s current research includes work on multimedia learning environments, videogames for learning, and language, cognition and symbolic understanding in children. He has served as consultant for a number of educational projects, including his current work with project UMIGO, which is funded by a US Department of Education Ready to Learn Grant to developing a transmedia curriculum to support young children’s acquisition of math skills. Dr. Homer’s research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Institute of Educational Sciences, the National Institutes of Health and Microsoft Research. He completed a B.Sc. in Psychology at Dalhousie University, and a M.A. and Ph.D. in Human Development and Applied Psychology at the Ontario Institute for Studies of Education at the University of Toronto.

Mark Leggott et. al

Digital Libraries (2009)

Mark Leggott is the head librarian at the University of Prince Edward Island.

Mike MacAdam (2009)

 

New web-based tool for developing skills and understanding skills when learning another language (2009)

 

There is a wealth of technology choices for learning and teaching the skills of reading and writing. Books, paper, pens, printing presses, word processors, and websites allow teachers to assign learning activities, evaluate the students’ work and assign new activities. Publishers also provide useful learning material. This isn’t the case for skills of speaking and understanding language where the dominant “technology” is a blackboard and the teacher’s voice. Most students can’t practice skills outside the classroom. This may be one of the main reasons why students have difficulty developing good speaking and understanding skills when learning another language. The free Chuala  (pronounced koala) website is the equivalent of a “Wikipedia for pronunciation” that allows users to login and record pronunciation examples in any of the 7,589 languages in the ISO 639 standard for language names. Name and geography information can also be added to specify accents, e.g. Acadian PEI French or American Midwest English. Translations can be added in any language and the resulting pronunciation examples can be grouped into lessons and courses.

Teaching and learning pronunciation skills is fundamentally changed when teachers and students have access to a free tool that automates the repetitive work required to develop good pronunciation and understanding skills. This presentation will identify some of the problems associated with developing good pronunciation and understanding skills. Some teaching and learning strategies based primarily on the deliberate practice methodology proposed by Anders Ericsson will be identified. Directions for future research in this area will be presented and discussed.

 

Mike MacAdam has a BSc (Physics) from UPEI and two degrees from Université Laval; a Master's in Instructional Practice and a teaching diploma. He also has a diploma from the National Coaching Institute in Victoria. Mike is President and Co-founder of Extemporel Inc. His Master's thesis included the development of a computerized system for evaluating the events that occur during basketball games. 

His research has been greatly influenced by Jean Brunelle, one of his faculty advisors at Université Laval, and Daryl Siedentop of Ohio State University. He has been working in the area of language acquisition, with a focus on developing pronunciation and understanding skills, since 1999. The goal is to develop tools to help authors and publishers develop interactive pronunciation courses that can be made available to mass markets. As part of this project, Extemporel has developed tools for researchers to facilitate fundamental research in language acquisition.

Sandy McAuley (2009)

Decolonizing Cyberspace: Online Knowledge-building support for a MEd Program for Inuit Educators in Nunavut (2009)

 

Offered by UPEI in partnership with the Nunavut Department of Education, Nunavut Arctic College, and St. Francis Xavier University, the Nunavut Master of Education (MEd) Program will see 21 graduates walk across the stage in Iqaluit, Nunavut on July 1, 2009. The first graduate degree to be offered entirely in Nunavut, the Nunavut MEd confronted a range of geographical, socio-cultural, and linguistic challenges over its three-year life. An integral part of the program, and perhaps one of its most surprising successes was the use of an asynchronous knowledge building environment to enable distance course delivery, supplement face-to-face course delivery, and support an ongoing community of learners between courses. This session will explore the design decisions behind the online portion of the Nunavut MEd, illustrate how it worked in practice, and discuss some of the learnings that emerged.

 

Sandy McAuley worked for seventeen years with online learning environments as supports for very small isolated secondary schools in Canada’s arctic. His work with educators and students to create and investigate online bilingual knowledge-building communities for Inuit students became the basis for his doctoral research at OISE/UToronto. A portion of this work was supported by the Canadian TeleLearning National Centres of Excellence and as a member of this team Sandy contributed to the development of Knowledge Forum, a powerful collaborative hypermedia environment. Sandy joined the UPEI Faculty of Education in 2003.

Sandy’s background in teaching English literature and creative drama has resulted in an interest in how digital media can use sound, graphics, and user-controllable virtual spaces to support the construction of meaning and the creation of knowledge and identity. His work in the far north has contributed to an awareness of the kinds of issues that cultural differences may bring to the use of these media to support learning.

Chadia Moghrabi and Adnen Barhoumi (2009)

An Adaptive Environment for Learning (2009)

 

This paper will present the design of an adaptive software tool which is based on learning theories, such as learning styles and multiple intelligences.  A literature review of existing e-learning systems that use learning styles as adaptability criteria will be presented.  The paper concludes with a review of artificial intelligence techniques and adaptability approaches useful in e-learning. InStyle is the new adaptability component being added to our LogiAuteur software. InStyle would react differently to different students by detecting their learning styles, based on their answers and their preferences, and then suggesting exercises or sections that correspond more appropriately to their needs (in progress).  Initially it presents the material/content in a variety of ways (each corresponding to a specific learning style), then asks the students to comment whether they liked it and why. Such intended flexibility would be available to the teacher during the preparation of the course material and to the students through an on-line learning environment. This approach promises to improve the student’s engagement and learning.

 

Dr. Chadia Moghrabi is professor and head of the Computer Science Department at the Université de Moncton.  She is also the research leader for the Moncton site of the Institute on Culture, Multimedia, Technology and Cognition (CMTC).  She was the technical director of Arts-Netlantic CMTC. Both projects were in collaboration and under the lead of Professor Cohen from UPEI.  She obtained her Master and Doctorate degrees from the University of Paris.  She worked in Paris both in the industry and as a lecturer at Université de Pierre et Marie Curie.  Her research interests cover Artificial Intelligence, Intelligent Teaching Systems, and natural language processing.

Adnen Barhoumi was pursuing a Masters degree in Computer Science at the Université de Moncton, under the supervision of professor Chadia Moghrabi.

Chadia Moghrabi & Eric Snow (2011)

Assessing open-ended questions through a modified ontology approach (2011)

 

This talk will present the design of a software tool aiming at semiautomatic assessment of open questions in e-learning environments. A literature review of existing systems that rely on Semantic Web technologies for the representation of domain-specific knowledge, such as the Web Ontology Language (OWL), will be presented. The talk concludes with an overview of the semantic similarity measurement techniques found in the literature.

Assessment by closed questions in e-learning courses is easily achieved by both humans and computers, but only triggers rote learning by students. This corresponds to the lowest level of Bloom’s taxonomy, namely knowledge. The highest level of this taxonomy, evaluation, requires more complex reasoning and can only be assessed by the use of open questions. The grading of these open questions is a tedious task for human teachers, therefore our approach aims at reducing the teachers’ workload by providing semiautomatic and objective evaluation of students’ answers.

Our software tool seeks to evaluate students’ answers to open questions in e-learning course exams by comparing them to a correct answer given by the course’s teacher. Using Natural Language Processing techniques, both the students’ and the teacher’s answers are semi-automatically annotated according to a reference domain-specific ontology. Using Semantic Web technologies, the ontology is represented in OWL, and could be acquired from different sources on the Web. Once semantically annotated, the students’ and teacher’s answers are compared using accepted semantic similarity measuring techniques and graded automatically according to parameters predefined by the teacher. Since our system is targeted at undergraduate computer science courses, the novelty of our approach resides in the encoding of procedural information in the ontology to accurately represent algorithmic knowledge.

This tool would be helpful in an e-learning setting where a more thorough evaluation of the students’ understanding of the material is needed; or to reduce the time spent by the teachers on grading papers.

 

Dr. Chadia Moghrabi is professor and head of the Computer Science Department at the Université de Moncton.  She is also the research leader for the Moncton site of the Institute on Culture, Multimedia, Technology and Cognition (CMTC).  She was the technical director of Arts-Netlantic CMTC. Both projects were in collaboration and under the lead of Professor Cohen from UPEI.  She obtained her Master and Doctorate degrees from the University of Paris.  She worked in Paris both in the industry and as a lecturer at Université de Pierre et Marie Curie.  Her research interests cover Artificial Intelligence, Intelligent Teaching Systems, and natural language processing.

Eric Snow is currently pursuing a Masters degree in Computer Science at the Université de Moncton, under the supervision of professor Chadia Moghrabi, working on the automatic assessment of open-ended questions in e-learning. For 10 years, he was a Web programmer at the Centre d'études acadiennes Anselme-Chiasson (CEAAC) of the Université de Moncton. Since 2007, he was in charge of creating a database of archival resources and digital files for the CEAAC.

Chadia Moghrabi, Remy Mazerolle and Adnen Barhoumib (2009)

Experimenting with an E-learning Tool (2009)

 

This paper will present some preliminary experimentation with the usability of an e-learning tool. LogiAteur is a tool that intends to improve the effectiveness of e-learning software and environments.  This aim is achieved by designing it with a number of criteria:

−LogiAteur has a collaborative environment where teachers and students can collaborate. The teacher can structure the course content by chapter or by problem or by case study, thus allowing for problem based learning, an approach quite appreciated in the educational community.

−He/she can edit the content itself by using an in house editor, or can choose to import an existing document written in whatever standard format, such as Word, Excel, PDF, etc.

−The chat room allows for discussion groups thus creating a collaborative learning environmentwhere students could comment on a problem or a home work.

The software was tested in a 9th grade class where the data was collected. A new adaptability module, InStyle, based on learning styles is being designed and added to it.

 

Chadia Moghrabi, Ph.D. and Rémy Mazerolle and Adnen Barhoumi are all part of the Département d’informatique at the Université de Moncton

Imelda Latapie Venegas

Measuring cognitive and emotional states through a commercial brain- computer interface to support multimedia design (2011)

 

While designing multimedia learning material, we select visual elements, audio and text, based on multimedia learning principles, instructional design guidelines and other considerations such as cognitive load or working memory limitations for processing information. Besides the complexity of the content, there are other factors that can create cognitive load and some of them are linked to the learner’s individual characteristics like previous knowledge or learning style.

Multimedia systems do not acknowledge if the student is attentive or experiences frustration, if content is complex or if an image or animation is too abstract or too simple. Learner’s response to stimuli is hard to detect, unless we use special devices. Cameras, haptic sensors, microphones, motion detectors and biometric sensors are now added to the traditional keyboard and mouse. However, they also bring new challenges to the selection of effective visual or audio elements, as in the case of augmented reality, speech recognition or non-speech sound recognition.

Commercial brain-computer interfaces were created for the video game industry. However they can be used as designing tools by developers and researchers. They can be programmed to control how multimedia content is displayed based on user’s response to stimuli, or be used to test how effective a multimedia content design is while it is displayed in different devices, like laptops or smartphones where screen size and interaction features can vary.

A maze controlled by two servos and an Arduino®board was designed to test attention, frustration, cognitive load and performance. Movement input commands are sent through serial communication from a brain-computer interface to a laptop's serial port. The research project works with a commercial brain-computer interface capable to recognize facial expressions, cognitive and emotional states. Its goal is to distinguish attention and frustration levels and their relation with cognitive overload. In addition, we aim to analyze brain’s activity while learner is solving simple and complex cognitive tasks in search of a distinctive brain activity we can relate to cognitive load.

 

Imelda Latapie is a freelance graphic designer and illustrator from Mexico City.  She won a bronze award in the Eighth Annual3 Dimensional Art Directors & Illustrators Show (New,York), a mention in the 5th “Catálogo para ilustradores Infantiles y Juveniles” (Mexico), and her illustrations have been published in magazines, posters and children’s textbooks.  She graduated with honorsas a Graphic Designer from Universidad Simón Bolívar in Mexico City;and received the “Medalla al Mérito Universitario” from Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana, campus Azcapotzalco in Mexico City, for her studies in Hipermedia and also for her Master’s degree studies, with the dissertation:“Método para el diseño de aplicaciones educativas: Una propuesta centrada en el aprendizaje e instrucción multimedia” (A method for designing educative applications: A proposal centered in multimedia learning and multimedia instructional design).  At the moment she is working in her PhD dissertation about brain computer interfaces applied to cognitive load detection. She received a grant from the Instituto de Ciencia y Tecnología del Distrito Federal, (Mexico) to support her doctoral investigation from August 2010 to January 2011.  She is studying to get her Bachelor of Computer Science at the University of the People; and she is interested in integrating new technologies to multimedia learning and multimedia instructional design.

Norman Yakel and Carol Casswell (2011)

“The times they are a-changin’*”: The massification of process and product in contemporary culture (2011)

 

The following proposed conference session offers participants a demonstration of two separate efforts to provide universal access to visual art experiences 1.)  A richly layered, curriculum-based website for online visual arts learning and 2.)  An intuitive, visual art-making application for the Apple iPad.    

How do technologies influence the massification of cultural artefacts or products and the processes to create them, within our contemporary society, through enhancement of public access?  How does this ever-changing technological milieu affect curriculum and classroom teaching in both secondary and post-secondary settings?

The visual presentation provides two clear examples of how, through enhancement of public access, technologies influence the massification of cultural artefacts or products and the processes used to create them within our contemporary society.  The intent is to share several ways in which technologies encourage, support and enhance public engagement with visual art and art experiences.

First, www.ARTSask.ca, an award-winning website, launched in August 2010, was initiated to offer an opportunity for comprehensive community access to major Canadian visual arts resources from the collections of the Mendel and MacKenzie Art Galleries, two primary public galleries of the province of Saskatchewan, Canada.  The ARTSask project presents theme-based, content-related and interactive online learning about visual art and artists in both English and French.  The online materials are designed to feature and promote local and national collective cultural heritage through an interactive online sharing of the imagery, ideas and lives of contemporary Saskatchewan and Canadian artists.

Secondly, ARTmaker, an application for the Apple iPad that provides access for people of all ages to a means for intuitively creating, manipulating and using visual images.  By its design, ARTmaker is an image-making invitation for not only professional artists and high school art majors, but offers welcoming opportunities and introduces digital means to be creative with image production for those who have always wanted to but who assumed a lack of skills or experience with art materials.  The massification of visual image creation becomes a reality!

* Bob Dylan (1964)

http://www.artmakerapp.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/ARTmaker-Ver31.mov

 www.ARTSask.ca

Carol Casswell has extensive experience in curriculum and professional development planning for Regina Public Schools, currently teaches high school Arts Education Grades 9-12, is a doctoral student at the University of Regina, and is Co-Director of ARTSask, a project involving a partnership among the University of Regina, the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon, the MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina and the Saskatchewan Ministry of Education that has been designed to create an online, contemporary visual art curriculum resource, using images from the collections of the Mendel and MacKenzie Art Galleries of Saskatchewan.

Norman Yakel is a senior professor in the Arts Education Program of the Faculty of Education, University of Regina where in addition to teaching, he is involved in numerous innovative community field work activities, supervises students in Graduate Studies in Art Education and is Co-Director of field work activities, involving a partnership among the University of Regina, the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon, the MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina and the Saskatchewan Ministry of Education that has been designed to create an online, contemporary visual art curriculum resource, using images from the collections of the Mendel and MacKenzie Art Galleries of Saskatchewan.

Representing the University of Regina, the presenters are the co-directors for the development of the ARTSask website, which received generous funding support from Canadian Heritage, in a competitive context, for two separate stages of the website’s development.  

Presenters are also developers of ARTmakerapp, an application for iPad and iPhone, designed for digital art-making that is intuitive, inspiring and by its design simplicity, accessible to everyone.