GIFT

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.

This new version of the proceedings is available in the documents section of the GIFTtutoring.org site. Errata have been addressed.

The GIFT team is coordinating a workshop at AIED 2015 titled: "Developing a Generalized Intelligent Framework for Tutoring (GIFT): Informing Design through a Community of Practice" Submission deadline of March 20.

The purpose of this workshop is to examine current research within the AIED community focused on improving adaptive tools and methods for authoring, automated instruction and evaluation associated with the Generalized Intelligent Framework for Tutoring (GIFT). The organizers plan to demonstrate various authoring tools and capabilities available within GIFT and to allocate time for hands-on interaction with GIFT’s authoring tools. The goal of this event is to provide an interactive forum for interested parties to learn about how GIFT operates, to learn about the various research efforts that are ongoing to improve its function, and to allow participants to share insights and opinions on presented work and demonstrations. This workshop is unique as it will also provide participants with opportunities to work alongside the presenters.
Agenda
Call for Papers
Submission Site

All... note dates for submission to GIFTSym3 below... abstract deadline extended two weeks.

2015, June 17-18th, University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida

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 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)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 analyze 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.

Submission instructions:
Paper submissions should be 10 pages maximum in APA format and submitted through Easy Chair at: https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=giftsym3. 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.sottilare@us.army.mil.

Important Dates

Symposium abstracts due: February 27, 2015
Symposium abstracts accepted: March 11, 2015
Symposium papers due: April 3, 2015
Decisions communicated to authors: April 22, 2015
Camera ready papers due: May 15, 2015
Presentations due: June 10, 2015
Symposium dates: June 17-18, 2015

Proceedings of the Second Annual GIFT Users Symposium are now available on https://www.gifttutoring.org/projects/gift/documents. Ebook versions of the proceedings will be available later this week on Google Play.

GIFT 2014-3X (“Holiday GIFT”) 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:
- Example EMAP course created to show enhanced adaptive branching
- More complete Excavator course added with additional levels of in-game assessment
- A tool for getting the status of performance assessment nodes (requested by community)
- Support for multiple users of a single GIFT instance
- Handful of bug fixes (including launching SIMILE)

Note that GIFT-2014-3X is an eXperimental release, and has not been fully regression tested. Please communicate any regression errors that you find on the forums at https://gifttutoring.org/projects/gift/boards.

2015, June 17-18th, University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida

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 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)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 analyze 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.

Submission instructions:
Paper submissions should be 10 pages maximum in APA format and submitted through Easy Chair at: https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=giftsym3. 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.sottilare@us.army.mil.

Important Dates

Symposium abstracts due: February 27, 2015
Symposium abstracts accepted: March 11, 2015
Symposium papers due: April 3, 2015
Decisions communicated to authors: April 22, 2015
Camera ready papers due: May 15, 2015
Presentations due: June 10, 2015
Symposium dates: June 17-18, 2015

Each version of GIFT has come with a new domain of instruction, to serve as an example of how to use various capabilities. The EMAP functionality in the current GIFT release allow for a pedagogical engine to select content based on information about the learner, skip content based on pre-test information, assign remediation based on post-test information, assess learners in a practice environment, and assign feedback/remediation from observations. You can see examples of most of these items by downloading a construction environment/terrain and training course on the Files tab (https://gifttutoring.org/projects/gift/files) and following the instructions in the zip files.

Hi GIFT Users... A new version of GIFT is now available to the public... we would like to hear about and share your experiences with GIFT. Have you applied GIFT in some novel way? In a classroom? Send us a picture of you and your class. For an evaluation or experiment? We would like to feature GIFT users and tell your story on www.GIFTtutoring.org.

Email your stories to: robert.a.sottilare.civ@mail.mil and title your email "GIFT User Experience"

Regards,

GIFT Development Team