First Call for Papers

Applications of Semantics, Opinion and Sentiments in eLearning
                         (ASOS)

          Workshop organized under the joint aegis of
              ELSNET and the LT4eL FP6  project
                 To be held at EUROLAN 2007
               July 23-27 2007 Iasi, Romania

           http://eurolan.info.uaic.ro/2007/ASOS

         Paper submission deadline: May 21st, 2007


The  workshop  will  address  the main themes of the EUROLAN-2007
Summer School, that is  Semantics, Opinions and Sentiments (SOS),
in relation with eLearning.

One  of  the  main  benefits  of  education is that it allows the
student  to  come  into  direct  contact  with  the  lecturer. In
face-to-face  classroom  education,  a  significant  part  of the
formation is based on this activity, in which the student listens
to  the  lecturer,  and  is  supposed  to be conquered by her/his
eloquence,  by  her/his  vocabulary  and  style, by the charm and
charismatic presence of a human  being. The role of a lecturer is
to transmit not only knowledge, but also passion, discipline, and
moral values. Very  often, sentiments, as  let to be perceived by
the lecturer and the  student, influence crucially the quality of
education.  Emotions  and  their  expression  should be perceived
either  as  a  feedback  in  the  reaction of the student or as a
component of the didactic activities.

Within technology  enhanced learning,  interaction is mediated by
the  computer  and  the  role  of  the human lecturer seems to be
diminished.  However,  a  new  generation of eLearning systems is
being developed,  in which  the human  component will play a much
more  relevant  role.  The  challenge  is  to  make  the learning
activities,  in  which  the   computer  gains  a  more  and  more
significant position, as natural as possible.

The intent of the workshop  is to present new work and innovating
ideas for the development  of eLearning systems that will exploit
opinions and  sentiments in  the communication  between the tutor
(real  or  virtual)  and  the  student.  The following topics are
relevant for the ASOS event:

* molecules of emotion, sentiment classification and modeling
* automatic and semi-automatic discovery of subjectivity
   indicators in education
* signaling and controlling sentiments in learning objects
* separation of subjectivity and objectivity in educational
   materials
* automatic generation of learning objects by integrating
   opinions and sentiments into content
* humor recognition and generation in educational media
* tracking themes and opinions over time
* annotation for deep semantics, sentiment, and subjectivity in
   eLearning
* subjectivity/sentiment and analysis of discourse and dialogue
   in chats, blogs, forums and interactive educational systems
* educational interfaces involving avatars displaying emotion
* communicating emotion in intelligent educational systems
* sentiments, opinions and rational behaviors in educational
   environments
* relationship between intelligent systems and emotional systems
* novel intelligent learning structures for emotional function
   and eLearning
* implementation of emotional systems and e-learning systems
* expressivity communicated in learning environments through
   speech and text
* applications of SOS to improve personalized and adaptive
   learning, adaptive information filtering and retrieval,
   intelligent tutoring
* behavior, emotions and sentiment ontologies
* evaluation of SOS in eLearning environments
* evaluation of emotional eLearning systems
* multilingual aspects in all the above

Papers are invited on substantial, original, and unpublished work
within the workshop themes.  All submissions  (even if they focus
on  only  one a spect  of  the mentioned topics)  should show how
eLearning  could  benefit  from  the  results.

We  encourage  submissions  by  young  researchers  even if their
research is in its initial stage since the workshop will give the
chance to presenters to shape their ideas and receive feedback.

The workshop will run  for three-four consecutive evenings during
the EUROLAN-07 Summer School.  Selected proposals will be invited
for a 30 minutes presentation  which will be followed by one hour
discussion moderated  by a  member of  the Program Committee. The
papers presented,  together with  a text summarizing the recorded
discussions following  the presentations,  will be published in a
volume in the