In 1969, Gordon Pask published a paper that explicitly proposed a vital connection between cybernetics and architecture. “The Architectural Relevance of Cybernetics” (Pask, 1969) was one outcome of an extraordinary series of debates and presentations centred around the theme of limits to science presented at the Architectural Association School of Architecture (AA) in London. The proceedings we...

In this paper, we present a set of measures to quantify certain properties of threaded discussions, which are ubiquitous in online learning platforms. In particular, we address how to measure the redundancy of posts, the compactness of topics, and the degree of hierarchy in sub-threads. This preliminary work would very much benefit from discussion and serves as a starting point for ultimately c...

The rapid growth of the Internet, coupled with improved multimedia capabilities in computing, has expanded the options for using technology to support collaborative learning. Asynchronous electronic conferencing is commonly used to support distributed discourse-based learning. Mind Bridges is a Web-based threaded discussion forum with support for embedded multimedia content. This paper describe...

In this paper, we describe the Adaptive Place Advisor, a user adaptive, conversational recommendation system designed to help users decide on a destination, specifically a restaurant. We view the selection of destinations as an interactive, conversational process, with the advisory system inquiring about desired item characteristics and the human responding. The user model, which contains prefe...

Eye Motion has a fundamental role in verbal and non-verbal communication among people. It can express emotions and regulate the flow of conversation. For this reason, it is very important that these movements can be realistic in Computer Animation’s applications, such as virtual humans in general and game/movies characters. This paper presents a model for producing eye movements in synthetic ag...

Phonetic convergence occurs both when individuals interact in conversation, and when listeners rapidly repeat words presented over headphones. Results from multiple studies examining phonetic convergence offer an array of often confusing and disparate findings. Reconciling such diverse findings is difficult without a clear rationale for engaging in one acoustic measure over another. The current...

In this paper, we describe the Adaptive Place Advisor, a conversational recommendation system designed to help users decide on a destination. We view the selection of destinations as an interactive, conversational process, with the advisory system inquiring about desired item characteristics and the human responding. The user model, which contains preferences regarding items, attributes, values...

In this paper, we describe the Adaptive Place Advisor, a conversational recommendation system designed to help users decide on a destination. We view the selection of destinations as an interactive, conversational process, with the advisory system inquiring about desired item characteristics and the human responding. The user model, which contains preferences regarding items, attributes, values...

This study addresses 3 research questions in the context of online political discussions: What is the distribution of successful topic starting practices, what characterizes the content of large thread-starting messages, and what is the source of that content? A 6-month analysis of almost 40,000 authors in 20 political Usenet newsgroups identified authors who received a disproportionate number ...

The present paper’s aim is to investigate how the participants of an online learning environment employed written language in a creative way through the spontaneous use of figurative language. The content analysis showed that figurative language was a means to express the social dimension either to refer to the self, feelings and emotions, or to conceptualize the components of the virtual learn...