Last 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 28, 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 aspect 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 "Al.I.Cuza" Publishing House.

The best reviewed submission will be granted a scholarship from the LT4eL European Project (http://www.lt4el.eu/) to cover the EUROLAN registration fee.

Proposals should be no longer than 8 pages, references excluded, and should be structured as follows:
- title, authors and affiliations
- short presentation of the domain and related work/and achievements
- your own previous work in this area (if existent)
- the main idea of the proposal
- your expected feedback from the audience, including some major questions that you want to address
- the potential and feasibility of the idea
- the foreseen dangers
- references

In order for your proposal to be selected, you should convince the Program Committee that it is SMART (Specific to the mentioned field, the effort encumbered be Measurable, its objectives be Achievable, the outcome be Relevant, and its realization be well Time-framed).

Submissions will be electronic. The papers will be uploaded on a special page, details can be found on the web page of the ASOS workshop.

Important dates:
* Paper submissions deadline: May 28, 2007
* Notification of acceptance: June 11, 2007
* Presentations / final papers due: July 9, 2007
* Summer School dates: July 23 - August 3, 2007

Authors of accepted papers must register for the EUROLAN Summer School and present their work at the ASOS workshop. No supplementary fee will be required above the EUROLAN fee. All accepted authors will benefit from the early registration fee regardless of the date they register. Participation in the ASOS workshop is open to all EUROLAN-2007 attendants.

Program Committee:

- Antonio Branco, University of Lisbon
- Dan Cristea, Al.I. Cuza University of Iasi
- Diane Evans, Open University
- Corina Forascu, Al.I. Cuza University of Iasi
- Erhard Hinrichs, Tübingen University
- Susanne J. Jekat, Zürich University of Applied Sciences Winterthur
- Walter v. Hahn, University of Hamburg
- Dirk Heylen, University of Twente
- Alex Killing, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zürich
- Steven Krauwer, Utrecht University
- Vladislav Kubon, Charles University - Prague
- Lothar Lemnitzer, Tübingen University
- Rada Mihalcea, University of Texas
- Paola Monachesi, Utrecht University
- Petya Osenova, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
- Adam Przepiórkowski, Institute of Computer Science, Polish Academy of Science
- Anne DeRoeck, Open University
- Mike Rosner, University of Malta
- Kiril Simov, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
- Carlo Strapparava, IRST-ITC Trento
- Horia-Nicolai Teodorescu, Romanian Academy
- Dan Tufis, Romanian Academy
- Cristina Vertan, University of Hamburg
- Michael Zock, University of Marseille

Organizing Committee:

- Paola Monachesi, Utrecht University
- Steven Krauwer, Utrecht University

To contact the organizers, please use the following address:
 Paola.Monachesi@let.uu.nl