GIFT

The GIFT team is coordinating three workshops at ITS 2014 on instructional strategies, teams, and authoring. They are described below. Submission deadline of March 20.

Pedagogy That Makes A Difference: Exploring Domain-Independent Principles across Instructional Management Research within the ITS Community
The purpose of this workshop is to examine current research within the ITS community focused on instructional management within educational technology, and to conceptualize its application in a domain-independent authoring environment, such as the Generalized Intelligent Framework for Tutoring (GIFT). The goal of this topic is to recognize the various factors associated with instructional management in ITSs, the types of strategies being applied in today’s use cases, and current trends being researched by the field.
Call for Papers
Submission Site

Guiding Collaborative Teams using Intelligent Tutoring Systems: Insight to the Unique Challenges of Tutoring Small Teams vs. Individual Learners:
The purpose of this workshop is to provide this Community with an in-depth exploration of the key issues and challenges surrounding collaborative team tutoring in intelligent tutoring systems (ITS). The Community is already aware and possess extensive knowledge of the complexities involved in providing individual one-to-one tutoring with ITS; however, expanding ITS to support geographically-distributed team training presents additional technical challenges yet to be explored.
Call for Papers
Submission Site

Intelligent Tutoring System Authoring Tools: Harvesting the Current Crop and Planting Seeds for the Future
The purpose of this workshop is to provide the ITS community with an outlet to present and demonstrate their cutting edge research into authoring tools. As the development of authoring tools is an applied research field, it is often difficult to translate the functionality and capabilities of the tools into written publications. The current workshop aims to provide an opportunity for in-person multimedia demonstrations of authoring tools, as well as a forum for authoring tools best practices.
Call for Papers
Submission Site

New conference schedule:

Symposium abstracts due: February 14, 2014
Symposium abstracts accepted: February 28, 2014
Symposium papers due: April 4, 2014
Decisions communicated to authors: April 22, 2014
Camera ready papers due: May 15, 2014
Presentations due: June 10, 2014
Symposium dates: June 12-13, 2014

Call for Papers
Second Annual User Symposium for the Generalized Intelligent Framework for Tutoring (GIFT): GIFTSym2

Recommendations for Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) Design Standards

June 12-13th, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh Pennsylvania

Scope and Topics of Interest:
The aim of this symposium is to bring together members of the Intelligent Tutoring Systems community for an in-depth exploration to pursue tools, methods, and standards for Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) as part of the Generalized Intelligent Framework for Tutoring (GIFT) research project sponsored by the US Army Research Laboratory. GIFT is a free, modular, service-oriented architecture whose goal is to make automated authoring, automated instruction, and effect analysis easy and cost-effective. GIFT has three primary objectives:

(1)provide an automated authoring capability to develop new ITSs and their components (e.g., learner models, pedagogical models, user interfaces, sensor interfaces), and standards to support the reuse of existing ITS components and leverage external training environments (e.g., serious games);

(2)provide an automated instructional capability based upon best tutoring principles, strategies, and tactics for use in ITSs;

(3)enable experimentation to analyze the effectiveness and impact of ITS components, tools, and methods.

More information about GIFT can be found on www.gifttutoring.org.

The program committee invites GIFT practitioners to submit papers highlighting their use of GIFT and recommendations for design enhancements in the following areas: automated authoring, automated instructional management, and effect analysis of learning outcomes.

Formatting instructions:
Please ensure that your papers are formatted correctly and are within the 10-page limit. Abstracts should be 500 words or less. Go to the Information for LNCS Authors for additional information on formatting. Download the LNCS template for the word processing software you would like to use. E.g., when using Word 2007, download LNCS-Office2007.zip, when using Word 97-2003, download word.zip, when using LaTex, download lncs.zip, and so forth. Note that most but not all of these downloads are listed at the top right (notable exception: LNCS-Office2007.zip is listed further down). You may ascertain which file to download for use with your preferred word processor by clicking on the relevant "Proceedings and Other Multi-author Volumes ..... " link. For Word 2007 this actually gets you to the download link. Unzip the file and study the instructions.

Submission instructions:
Paper submissions should be 10 pages maximum in Springer LNCS format and submitted through Easy Chair at: https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=giftsym2. Only submissions in .doc (Word) format will be accepted. All submissions should be in English. Address any questions to robert.sottilare@us.army.mil.

Important dates:
Symposium abstracts due: February 1, 2014
Symposium abstracts accepted: February 14, 2014
Symposium papers due: March 28, 2014
Decisions communicated to authors: April 15, 2014
Camera ready papers due: May 15, 2014
Presentations due: June 10, 2014
Symposium dates: June 12-13, 2014

GIFT version 4.0 is now available for download by registered users on the GIFT Portal (http://gifttutoring.org).

Download the file here: https://gifttutoring.org/projects/gift/files

Important changes made since the last release include:

• JUnit Test Suite
• Mid-lesson AutoTutor Session
• Import Domain Tool
• How to Migrate Authored Elements from 3.* to 4.0
• Export Tutor Improvements
• New Domains
• Python Support
• New Sensor Filters
• Installation Improvements
• Course List Filtering
• SIMILE Assessment Engine
• Survey Authoring System
• Sensor Module
• Gateway Module
• Multiple LMS Connections
• Miscellaneous

After downloading more details are available in the release notes.

Army Research Laboratory is recruiting for a Postdoctoral Fellow with expertise in adaptive training and computer science, preferably with experience with Markov Modeling for a position in the Learning in Intelligent Tutoring Environments (LITE) laboratory in Orlando, Florida. More information, as well as how to apply, may be found at:
http://www.orau.org/ARLPostdocFellowship/applicants/hred/hred-adaptive-computer-tutoring.html

"Design Recommendations for Intelligent Tutoring Systems - Volume 1 - Learner Modeling" is now available in pdf format. This book is a collaboration between ARL, the University of Memphis, and scores of government and academic partners to provide a ready reference for researchers and ITS developers. Download at https://gifttutoring.org/projects/gift/documents

GIFT 3.01 is released with three minor changes:
1 - It has been modified to support a single 'unzip' action, in response to community comments against GIFT distribution zip folder.
2 - Embedded audio and longer filepath structure is now supported.
3 - A bug has been fixed related to the use of the Export Tutor Tool with newly created Survey Authoring System surveys.

More detail is available in the GIFT 3.0 to GIFT 3.01 patch notes. The GIFT 3.01 patch can be used to update an existing GIFT 3.0 installation.

A GIFT 3.0 user should update to GIFT 3.01 if either of the following applies:
1 - They intend to use the Export Tutor tool for surveys made with the SAS.
2 - They have experienced issues with any of the PPT files not playing sound when expected.

GIFT was presented to the Simulation & Training Technical Advisory Board (TAB) in Orlando, Florida. The TAB is composed of experts selected by the National Academy of Sciences to review the quality of simulation and training science at ARL. GIFT was well received.

GIFT version 3.0 is now available for download by registered users on the GIFT Portal (http://gifttutoring.org).

Download the file here: https://gifttutoring.org/projects/gift/files

New features/capabilities include:

• Integration with TC3Sim (aka VMedic), including assessment using the SIMILE assessment engine
• Ability to run GIFT in a single process using the Single Process Launcher (SPL)
• Export Tutor capability which allows creation of a redistributable tutoring capability in a single zip file requiring minimal installation.
• New Pedagogical Model (eMap)
• Metadata Authoring Tool
• Human Affect Recording Tool (aka HART) application (not integrated with GIFT)
• GIFT Kinect Decoder (used to process Kinect data captured by GIFT)
• Instructional Strategies increased sophistication
• XML Schema Changes
• Internal Message Queuing
• Integration of new Sensors: Microsoft Kinect, Multisense Sensor, BioHarness Sensor, OS3D Sensor
• Tutor User Interface HTML Guidance
• New Domains
• Several new Surveys
• Survey Scoring Capability
• Hyper-linked HTML documentation
• AutoTutor conversational dialogues based on LSA assessment, AutoTutor scripts, and GIFT pedagogy.

After downloading more details are available in the release notes.

Call for Papers: ARL will be holding a GIFT User Meeting on13 July at the University of Memphis and we want to hear about how you are using GIFT and your recommendations for making GIFT more useful to the Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) community. See the linked Call for Papers for more information.

The submission deadline has been EXTENDED to 19 April. Final papers are due on June 7, 2013.

Call for Papers - https://litelab.arl.army.mil/system/files/GIFT_Users-final.pdf

The aim of this workshop is to bring together members of the ITS community for an in-depth exploration of ARL’s effort to develop tools, methods, and standards for Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) as part of their Generalized Intelligent Framework for Tutoring (GIFT) research project. GIFT is a modular, service-oriented architecture whose goal is to address authoring, instructional strategies, and analysis constraints currently limiting the use and reuse of ITS today. GIFT has three primary objectives: (1) provide an authoring capability to develop new ITS and their components (e.g., learner models, pedagogical models, user interfaces, sensor interfaces), and standards to support the reuse of existing ITS components and leverage external training environments (e.g., serious games - Sottilare and Gilbert, 2011); (2) provide an instructional manager that encompasses best tutoring principles, strategies, and tactics for use in computer-based tutoring systems (CBTS); and (3) an experimental testbed to analyze the effectiveness and impact of CBTS components, tools, and methods. More information about GIFT can be found on www.gifttutoring.org.