In this paper we investigate the use of Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA), Critiquing Systems, and Knowledge Building to support computerbased teaching of English composition. We have built and tested an English Composition Critiquing System that make use of LSA to analyze student essays and compute feedback by comparing their essays with teacher’s model essays. LSA values are input to a critiquin...

In the past, little attention has been paid to critiquing in domains in which reasoning, planning and action are interleaved, or in which actions can change the agent's knowledge in ways that aaect subsequent reasoning and planning. This paper discusses the demands these characteristics make on a critiquing system. The goal-directed approach to critiquing that I am developing interacts with a p...

Eliminating previously recommended products in critiquing limits the choices available to users when they attempt to navigate back to products they critiqued earlier in the dialogue (e.g., in search of cheaper alternatives). In the worst case, a user may find that the only product she is prepared to accept (e.g., having ruled out cheaper alternatives) has been eliminated. However, an equally se...

Over the past decade a significant amount of recommender systems research has demonstrated the benefits of conversational architectures that employ critique-based interfacing (e.g., Show me more like item A, but cheaper). The critiquing phenomenon has attracted great interest in line with the growing need for more sophisticated decision/recommendation support systems to assist online users who ...

The authors developed a decision tree-critiquing program (called BUNYAN) that identifies potential modeling errors in medical decision trees. The program's critiques are based on the structure of a decision problem, obtained from an abstract description specifying only the basic semantic categories of the model's components. A taxonomy of node and branch types supplies the primitive building bl...

The increasing focus on design for manufacturability (DFM) in research in concurrent engineering and engineering design is expanding the scope of traditional design activities in order to identify and eliminate manufacturing problems during the design stage. Manufacturing a product generally involves many different kinds of manufacturing activities, each having different characteristics. A desi...

When learning problem-solving or decision-making strategies, a human needs to be active and develop an own mental model of the problem-domain. To optimise the learned knowledge, clear, timely and individually adapted comments on the own findings are needed. In a computerised learning environment, the adaptation to the user is a complex task, often handled by a knowledge base interpreting the us...

Expert critiquing systems are a type of humancomputer collaborative system in which a computer agent presents reasoned opinions about a human agent’s problem-solving process for a given task. The challenge in such systems is to provide timely critiques relevant to the user’s focus of attention. A problem with many expert critiquing systems is that their critiques are not always timely or releva...