Hi GIFT Users...

As you know we will be holding the 4th Annual GIFT Users Symposium in Princeton, NJ this May... it will be held the same week as previously scheduled, but the days have move around a bit...

GIFTSym4 will now begin Wednesday afternoon at 1pm on 25 May and will end at 5pm on Thursday afternoon, 26 May. Wednesday afternoon will be a showcase of 4 papers to highlight the diversity and complexity of GIFT development.

To make hotel reservations to attend GIFTSym4 at the Chauncey Hotel and Conference Center please call Jessica Menshoff before April 4th, 2016... her contact information follows...

Jessica Menshoff, 609.279.6430, jmenshoff@ets.org

Her work hours are 8:00 am EST to 4:30 pm EST.

Jessica has access to the Chauncey system and can make the hotel reservations for GIFTSym4 at $127/night. Please do not email credit card information to Jessica.

Please make your reservations for the GIFTSym4 room block by the deadline or the hotel rate will increase.

Hi GIFT users... below is an exciting opportunity for you to contribute to a special issue of the International Journal of AI in Education (AIED), a top-notch journal.

The title of our special issue is: Generalized Intelligent Framework for Tutoring (GIFT): Creating a stable and flexible platform for innovations in AIED research

Below are the details for the call for papers... they also appear at: http://www.ijaied.org/journal/cfp/

If you have experience with GIFT or have research that you think can contribute to the development of GIFT as a research platform, please think about contributing to this special issue.

Special Issue Associate Editors¶

• Robert Sottilare, Army Research Laboratory, USA
• Arthur Graesser, University of Memphis, USA
• James Lester, North Carolina State University, USA
• Ryan Baker, Teachers College of Columbia University, USA

Important Dates¶

• Submission of Complete Manuscripts June 17, 2016
• Reviews due to authors August 17, 2016
• Revisions due Oct 31, 2016
• Second round of reviews to authors Dec 31, 2016
• Camera-ready version Jan 31, 2017

Publication of Special Issue - Each paper will appear on the Online First as soon as it has been accepted and processed.

The full Special Issue will be assembled in the second quarter of 2017.

Submission instructions¶

Submit papers at http://aied.edmgr.com/ using the special submission type: "SI GIFT".

Motivation and Scope¶

Over the last five years, the Generalized Intelligent Framework for Tutoring (GIFT) has emerged as a standard for authoring, deploying, managing, and evaluating Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) technologies. A goal for GIFT is to capture best practices across the spectrum of automated instruction to reduce the time and skills needed to author tutors, to enhance the effectiveness of instructional strategies implemented by tutors, and to provide a testbed for ITS researchers to evaluate various adaptive instructional tools and methods. GIFT has been used to construct and evaluate tutors in various domains including management of interaction with learners in existing external simulations, serious games, and computer-based training environments to teach physics (e.g., Newtonian Talk), training military tasks and tactics (e.g., Virtual BattleSpace and Virtual Medic), and solve cognitive problems (e.g., logic and Sudoku puzzles). To date, nearly 700 users in 50 countries and 70 organizations have used and helped improve the authoring tools, individual learner and team models, instructional management techniques, domain models, learning effectiveness evaluation tools, and architectural services in GIFT, but there is a long way to go to realize a fully generalizable architecture for cognitive, affective, physical, and social training and educational environments.

A catalyst for this special issue is the GIFT Symposium (GIFTSym) series which was originally organized as a workshop at the AIED 2013 in Memphis. GIFTSym continues annually with published proceedings and provides a forum for GIFT users and stakeholders to discuss their successes and challenges in using and evaluating GIFT across domains and learner populations. Scientists outside the GIFT user community have also participated in GIFTSym to provide critique on both the design and implementation of GIFT as a generalized tutoring architecture.

A goal of this special issue is to identify new best practices for GIFT and the ITS community. We also seek innovative AI contributions which provide the community a platform or testbed in which to conduct their research and guide them through the experimentation and analysis processes. There remain challenges with authoring ITSs (e.g., time and specialized skills required), delivering and consumption of instruction (e.g., remote sensing and intermittent connectivity), instructional management (e.g., methods to tailor instruction and selection of optimal strategies), and evaluation methods (e.g., time and skill required to set up evaluations, and consistency of evaluation methods).

This special issue also seeks innovative contributions for AI-based tools and methods which reduce experimental workload and facilitate the evaluation of ITS technology from a researcher’s point-of-view. In addition to specific designs and implementations in GIFT, we are seeking opportunities to enhance GIFT tools and methods to more efficiently acquire and analyze leaner and environment data, assess learner and team states, reduce authoring burden, and select optimal strategies and tactics. Literature reviews and meta-analyses that provide a thorough overview of the state of the art related to some aspects of the above-mentioned problems are also welcome.

Topic of Interests¶

The scope includes (but is not limited to) the topics below:

Architectural topics

• Service-oriented architectural design features for GIFT (or similar ITS frameworks)
• Multi-agent architectural designs to support learner assessment in GIFT (or similar ITS frameworks)
• ITS interoperability standards for reuse
• Team tutoring architectures

Authoring tools and methods

• AI-based authoring tools for tutoring tasks in various domains (cognitive, affective, physical, and social/collaborative)
• Integrating interactive environments (e.g., simulations and serious games) with GIFT for adaptive training
• Augmentation technologies for adaptive instruction
• Enhancing user experiences (UXs) for ITS authoring tasks

Individual learner and team modeling

• Real-time vs. long-term modeling of individual learner and team knowledge acquisition, skill development and performance
• Interoperable learner models
• Low cost, unobtrusive sensing and learner state classification
• Intelligent support to develop critical thinking and problem solving skills

Instructional management strategies

• AI-based learning and instructional strategies
• Cognitive and metacognitive support strategies

Domain modeling

• AI-based adaptation and personalization methods for learning environments

Effectiveness Measures

• Measures of learning and performance effect for individual learners and teams
• Tools for educational informatics in GIFT (or similar ITS frameworks) to support learning at scale

26 May 2016 - Educational Test Service, Chauncey Conference Center, Princeton, NJ

Scope and Topics of Interest:
The aim of this symposium is to bring together members of the GIFT User community for an in-depth exploration of tools, methods, and standards for Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) as part of the research and development of the Generalized Intelligent Framework for Tutoring (GIFT) 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)reduce the skill and time needed to author ITSs
(2)provide an automated instructional capability based upon best tutoring principles, strategies, and tactics for use in ITSs;
(3)enable experimentation to evaluate the effectiveness and impact of ITS components, tools, and methods.

The program committee invites GIFT practitioners and ITS scientists to submit papers highlighting their use of GIFT and recommendations for design enhancements in the following areas: automated authoring, automated instructional management, and evaluation of learning, retention and transfer effect. Additional topics of interest include: team tutoring, multi-agent architectures for GIFT, and competency modeling/ long term learner modeling.

• Four papers will be selected for special presentation in the GIFT Showcase to our advisory board on 24 May. The primary authors of these four special papers will be added as advisory board members for meetings on 24 and 25 May. Regular papers will be presented on 26 May.

Submission instructions:
Paper submissions should be 8-10 pages (10 page maximum) in APA format and submitted through Easy Chair at: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=giftsym4. Only submissions in .doc (Word) format will be accepted and a template will be made available on https://www.gifttutoring.org/documents/48. All submissions should be in English. Address any questions to robert.a.sottilare.civ@mail.mil.

Important Dates

GIFTSym4 Abstracts Due 2016-02-01
Author Notification of Abstract Acceptance 2016-02-12
GIFTSym4 Papers Due 2016-04-08
Author Notification of Paper Acceptance 2016-04-22
Camera Ready Papers Due 2016-05-06
Presentations Due 2016-05-17
GIFTSym4, Princeton, NJ 2016-05-26

The Army Research Laboratory's Open Campus is a collaborative endeavor, with the goal of building a science and technology ecosystem to encourage groundbreaking advances. This is a physical meeting taking place at the Army Research Laboratory Campus in Aberdeen Proving Ground Maryland. You can read more about Open Campus and its opportunities for collaboration at its homepage: http://www.arl.army.mil/opencampus/.

In this spirit, the GIFT team announces GIFT Virtual Open Campus (GIFT Cloud), which is a web-based product which allows users to build tutors, take tutoring content, run experiments, and build experimental reports for analysis. These features are now available on the web, with no download required, and made compatible with the most recent version of GIFT (GIFT Local).

Check it out at https://cloud.gifttutoring.org

GIFT 2015-2X (GIFT Local) is now available for download by registered users on the GIFT Portal at http://gifttutoring.org

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

Additions/improvements include:
- A simplified web-based dashboard has been added, and significantly improved upon
- Ability to create an adaptive course and delivery, without programming, in a browser
- New deployment mode ("Server"), which supports many simultaneous users
- Dramatically better course import/export functionality, based on course folders
- Various UI tweaks and improvements

The GIFTSym3 Proceedings are now available. See https://gifttutoring.org/projects/gift/documents for more information.

Additionally, the End User License Agreement has been updated to reflect a better understanding of the rights/responsibilities for GIFT users. Two examples of items now explicitly handled in EULA documentation are “Can I create a plug-in GIFT and sell it?” and “Can I sell GIFT directly?” (the answers are "yes" and "no"). See https://gifttutoring.org/attachments/download/1095/gift_eula.html for more information.

The third book in the adaptive tutoring series, "Design Recommendations for Intelligent Tutoring Systems - Volume 3 - Authoring Tools and Expert Modeling Techniques" is now available under the documents tab.

Volume 3 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 2015-1 (Web release) is now available for download by registered users on the GIFT Portal at http://gifttutoring.org

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

Additions/improvements include:

- A drastically simplified web-based dashboard has been added

- All user tools to create/deliver content are now accessible via web browser, including configurable pedagogical rules

- Ability to create an adaptive course and delivery, without programming, in a browser

- New deployment mode (either "Desktop" or "Experiment")

- Support for RapidMiner-developed Machine Learning modules

- Simplified file services layer for working with desktop files

- VBS3 support

- and more!

The 3rd Annual GIFT Users Symposium (GIFTSym3) will be held 17-18 June at the Canterbury Retreat and Conference Center, 1601 Alafaya Trail, Oviedo, FL 32765. The agenda follows:

Session 1: Wednesday afternoon - 17 June 2015

• 1300: Welcome – Bob Sottilare

Theme #1 – Applications of GIFT
• 1315: Paper #8: GIFT-Powered NewtonianTalk - Weinan Zhao, Matthew Ventura, Benjamin Nye and Xiangen Hu
• 1345: Paper #9: Using GIFT to Model and Support Students’ Metacognition in the UrbanSim Open-Ended Learning Environment - James Segedy, John Kinnebrew, Benjamin Goldberg, Robert Sottilare and Gautam Biswas
• 1415: Paper #11: GIFT-Virtual Trainer Integration Lessons Learned - Gregory Dukstein and Derek Crane

• 1445: Break

Theme #2: Learner Modeling
• 1500: Paper #10: Developing Persistent, Interoperable Learner Models in GIFT - Gregory Goodwin, Mike Hruska and Jennifer Murphy
• 1530: Paper #6: Characteristics of a Multi-User Tutoring Architecture - Eliot Winer, Joseph Holub, Trevor Richardson, Michael Hoffman, Stephen Gilbert and Michael Dorneich
• 1600: Paper #12: The Unpacking of Team Models in GIFT - Shawn Burke, Jennifer Feitosa and Eduardo Salas

• 1630: Adjourn for the Day

Session 2: Thursday morning - 18 June 2015

• 0830: Welcome

Special Track - GIFT 2015-1 Demonstrations and Q&A
• 0845: Panel on New Features and Future Directions – Bob Sottilare, Keith Brawner, Benjamin Goldberg, and Anne Sinatra

• 1000: Break

Theme #3 – Instructional Management
• 1015: Paper #16: Unsupervised Discovery of Tutorial Dialogue States with Hidden Markov Models – Vasile Rus
• 1045: Paper #5: Motivational Feedback Designs for Frustration in a Simulation-based Combat Medic Training Environment - Jeanine Defalco, Ryan Baker, Luc Paquette, Vasiliki Georgoulas, Jonathan Rowe, Bradford Mott and James Lester
• 1115: Paper #4: Toward a Modular Reinforcement Learning Framework for Tutorial Planning in GIFT Jonathan Rowe, Bradford Mott, James Lester, Bob Pokorny, Wilbur Peng and Benjamin Goldberg

Lunch: 1145–1300 (on your own)

Session 3: Thursday afternoon - 18 June 2015

Theme #4 – Domain Modeling
• 1300: Paper #13: Dimensions and Challenges in Domain Modeling for Adaptive Training – Bob Sottilare
• 1330: Paper #15: The Application of GIFT in a Psychomotor Domain of Instruction – Benjamin Goldberg
• 1400: Paper #18: How to CREATE Domain Content for Intelligent Tutoring Systems - Terry Patten, Max Metzger, Stephen Hookway, Amy Sliva, Samuel Lasser, Jeffrey Wallace and Rodney Long

• 1430: Break

Theme #4 – GIFT User Perspectives
• 1445: Paper #17: The GIFT 2015 Report Card and the State of the Project – Keith Brawner and Scott Ososky
• 1515: Paper #2: The Instructor’s Guide to GIFT: Recommendations for Using GIFT In and Out of the Classroom – Anne Sinatra

Theme #6: Dialogue-Based Tutoring
• 1545: Paper #3: Design of a Domain-Independent, Interactive, Dialogue-Based Tutor for Use with the GIFT Framework - Elaine Kelsey, Fritz Ray, Debbie Brown and Robby Robson
• 1615: Paper #7: Center for Study of Adult Literacy (CSAL) AutoTutor: Integrating Rich Media with AutoTutor Conversation Engine - Zhiqiang Cai, Art Graesser, Xiangen Hu and Benjamin Nye

• 1630: Closing Remarks – Bob Sottilare

• 1645: Adjourn GIFTSym3

In the same fashion as GIFT-2014-2 (and GIFT-2014-3X), the GIFT team anticipates a regression-tested GIFT-2015-1 software release by the end of the week, with a web-hosted GIFT-2015-2X version in the coming month or two. Stay tuned for a host of new features and developments.