Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Dialogue assistance'

Les interfaces homme-machine destinées au grand public demeurent souvent d'une approche difficile malgré leur caractère attrayant et leurs nombreuses fonctionnalités. Un utilisateur peu expérimenté doit ainsi fournir un effort d'apprentissage et de compréhension important. Dans cette thèse, nous défendons notre point de vue sur le dialogue d'assistance à l'utilisateur dans le cadre de son interaction avec une interface multimodale intelligente. Pour cela, nous avons adopté une démarche empirique basée sur une expérience du type Magicien d'Oz. L'étude psycho- sociale du corpus obtenu a permis d'identifier et de formaliser des schémas de dialogue propres à différents type d'aide. A partir de ces résultats, nous proposons un modèle d'architecture multi-agents d'interface multimodale intelligente. Nous présentons une maquette du système de dialogue d'assistance montrant la mise en oeuvre des schémas de dialogue dans un système multi-agents
Man-machine interfaces for a wide range of users still remain difficult to use in spite of their attractive aspect and their many fonctionalities. Thus, a novice user has to learn how to use the interface. In this thesis, we present our results on the assistance dialogue with a user in interaction with a multimodal intelligent interface. We conducted an experimental study using the Wizard of Oz paradigm to observe the behaviour of the users in front of such a system. The psycho-social study of the corpus permitted to identify and formalise dialogue schemes corresponding to different types of help. From these results we propose a model of a multi-agents architecture of a multimodal intelligent interface. We present a prototype of the assistance dialogue system which shows the use of the dialogue schemes in a multi-agents system

L'objet de notre étude porte sur l'élaboration d'un système générique de dialogue homme-machine multimodal, le système Partner. Ses objectifs portent d'une part sur la création d'une interface multimodale conviviale et robuste, et d'autre part sur la définition d'une architecture propre à faciliter le développement d'applications variées. Sa contribution se situe dans le cadre d'applications finalisées. L'interface multimodale qu'il fournit, permet à un utilisateur coopératif de communiquer naturellement avec une application au moyen de la parole, mais aussi au moyen d'autres périphériques comme une souris, un écran tactile et un clavier. Un modèle sémantique multimodal est utilisé pour assurer l'indépendance du système vis-à-vis des périphériques d'entrées/sorties et de la langue. L'approche de Partner est basée sur une analyse des besoins interactionnels des applications qui a conduit à l'identification d'invariants dialogue. Il se caractérise par une architecture originale qui est de type client/serveur. Elle correspond à une décomposition de l'activité de communication en deux domaines d'expertise qui permet de décharger les applications des aspects interactionnels du dialogue pour que celles-ci puissent se focaliser sur leur tache. Un environnement de développement (toolkit dialogue) est mis à la disposition des concepteurs d'applications. Pour assurer une interaction conviviale et robuste, le système fournit également des mécanismes pour la gestion d'erreurs et d'incertitudes, et propose différentes solutions pour assister les utilisateurs dans leur interaction avec la machine. Partner est un système de dialogue opérationnel qui a donne lieu, à ce jour, à la réalisation de trois applications qui fonctionnent en temps réel et en plusieurs langues

Un système de dialogue conversationnel doit aider les utilisateurs humains à atteindre leurs objectifs à travers des dialogues naturels et efficients. C'est une tache toutefois difficile car les langages naturels sont ambiguës et incertains, de plus le système de reconnaissance vocale (ASR) est bruité. À cela s'ajoute le fait que l'utilisateur humain peut changer son intention lors de l'interaction avec la machine. Dans ce contexte, l'application des processus décisionnels de Markov partiellement observables (POMDPs) au système de dialogue conversationnel nous a permis d'avoir un cadre formel pour représenter explicitement les incertitudes, et automatiser la politique d'optimisation. L'estimation des composantes du modelé d'un POMDP-dialogue constitue donc un défi important, car une telle estimation a un impact direct sur la politique d'optimisation du POMDP-dialogue. Cette thèse propose des méthodes d'apprentissage des composantes d'un POMDPdialogue basées sur des dialogues bruités et sans annotation. Pour cela, nous présentons des méthodes pour apprendre les intentions possibles des utilisateurs à partir des dialogues, en vue de les utiliser comme états du POMDP-dialogue, et l'apprendre un modèle du maximum de vraisemblance à partir des données, pour transition du POMDP. Car c'est crucial de réduire la taille d'état d'observation, nous proposons également deux modèles d'observation: le modelé mot-clé et le modelé intention. Dans les deux modèles, le nombre d'observations est réduit significativement tandis que le rendement reste élevé, particulièrement dans le modele d'observation intention. En plus de ces composantes du modèle, les POMDPs exigent également une fonction de récompense. Donc, nous proposons de nouveaux algorithmes pour l'apprentissage du modele de récompenses, un apprentissage qui est basé sur le renforcement inverse (IRL). En particulier, nous proposons POMDP-IRL-BT qui fonctionne sur les états de croyance disponibles dans les dialogues du corpus. L'algorithme apprend le modele de récompense par l'estimation du modele de transition de croyance, semblable aux modèles de transition des états dans un MDP (processus décisionnel de Markov). Finalement, nous appliquons les méthodes proposées à un domaine de la santé en vue d'apprendre un POMDP-dialogue et ce essentiellement à partir de dialogues réels, bruités, et sans annotations.
Spoken dialogue systems should realize the user intentions and maintain a natural and efficient dialogue with users. This is however a difficult task as spoken language is naturally ambiguous and uncertain, and further the automatic speech recognition (ASR) output is noisy. In addition, the human user may change his intention during the interaction with the machine. To tackle this difficult task, the partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) framework has been applied in dialogue systems as a formal framework to represent uncertainty explicitly while supporting automated policy solving. In this context, estimating the dialogue POMDP model components is a signifficant challenge as they have a direct impact on the optimized dialogue POMDP policy. This thesis proposes methods for learning dialogue POMDP model components using noisy and unannotated dialogues. Speciffically, we introduce techniques to learn the set of possible user intentions from dialogues, use them as the dialogue POMDP states, and learn a maximum likelihood POMDP transition model from data. Since it is crucial to reduce the observation state size, we then propose two observation models: the keyword model and the intention model. Using these two models, the number of observations is reduced signifficantly while the POMDP performance remains high particularly in the intention POMDP. In addition to these model components, POMDPs also require a reward function. So, we propose new algorithms for learning the POMDP reward model from dialogues based on inverse reinforcement learning (IRL). In particular, we propose the POMDP-IRL-BT algorithm (BT for belief transition) that works on the belief states available in the dialogues. This algorithm learns the reward model by estimating a belief transition model, similar to MDP (Markov decision process) transition models. Ultimately, we apply the proposed methods on a healthcare domain and learn a dialogue POMDP essentially from real unannotated and noisy dialogues.

Personal assistants need to allow the user to interact with the system in a flexible and adaptive way such as through spoken language dialogue. This research is aimed at achieving robust and effective dialogue management in such applications. We focus on an application, the Smart Personal Assistant (SPA), in which the user can use a variety of devices to interact with a collection of personal assistants, each specializing in a task domain. The current implementation of the SPA contains an e-mail management agent and a calendar agent that the user can interact with through a spoken dialogue and a graphical interface on PDAs. The user-system interaction is handled by a Dialogue Manager agent. We propose an agent-based approach that makes use of a BDI agent architecture for dialogue modelling and control. The Dialogue Manager agent of the SPA acts as the central point for maintaining coherent user-system interaction and coordinating the activities of the assistants. The dialogue model consists of a set of complex but modular plans for handling communicative goals. The dialogue control flow emerges automatically as the result of the agent???s plan selection by the BDI interpreter. In addition the Dialogue Manager maintains the conversational context, the domainspecific knowledge and the user model in its internal beliefs. We also consider the problem of dialogue adaptation in such agent-based dialogue systems. We present a novel way of integrating learning into a BDI architecture so that the agent can learn to select the most suitable plan among those applicable in the current context. This enables the Dialogue Manager agent to tailor its responses according to the conversational context and the user???s physical context, devices and preferences. Finally, we report the evaluation results, which indicate the robustness and effectiveness of the dialogue model in handling a range of users.

Cette thèse s'intéresse au problème de la modélisation des processus cognitifs mis en œuvre dans l'argumentation. Nous nous sommes focalisés sur les deux questions de recherche suivantes : la caractérisation des situations stimulant l'argumentation entre apprenants et l'élaboration d'un modèle analytique des dialogues de résolution de problème et de leurs phases d'argumentation. En premier lieu, nous avons conçu un environnement informatique (damocles) de recueil d'argumentations médiatisées par ordinateur et de résolution critique de problèmes - les chaines énergétiques - grâce à la conjugaison de deux modes de représentation (graphique et textuelle). Appuyé sur un modèle des situations favorables à l'argumentation, damocles optimise le potentiel argumentatif des dialogues par l'appariement automatique des élèves selon les différences conceptuelles entre leurs solutions. Nous avons ensuite élaboré un modèle analytique de l'argumentation dans les dialogues de résolution de problèmes. Dans une vision problématologique du dialogue, l'argumentation est conçue comme une activité de résolution de conflit en superposition à la résolution de problème. La double fonction dialogique des interventions (fonction de résolution de problème et fonction dialectique) est analysée grâce à une taxonomie reposant sur trois critères indépendants : l'orientation interlocutoire, l'univers de référence et l'opération de pensée critique. Nous avons testé damocles avec un groupe de huit élèves de seconde et analysé le corpus selon notre modèle, qui a pu révéler le taux d'argumentation des dialogues produits et les capacités de couverture du modèle analytique. De plus, cette analyse met en évidence les apports de l'argumentation dans l'apprentissage conceptuel : l'acquisition d'une meilleure maitrise des données et des contraintes du problème. Nous envisageons de poursuivre ces travaux par le recueil de corpus plus importants pour approfondir la validation des modèles développés.

L'aide ambiante à la personne (ambiant assisted living) a pour objectif d'accompagner le vieillissement de la population. Cela s'instancie notamment par les maisons intelligentes (smart homes), équipées de multiples capteurs connectés, dont un des objectifs est de prolonger le maintien à domicile des personnes âgées. Le manuscrit s'attache d'abord à introduire la problématique générale des maisons intelligentes, avant de présenter plus avant les trois sous-thématiques qui font plus particulièrement l'objet de la thèse, à savoir la reconnaissance d'activités, la confidentialité et les systèmes de dialogue.La reconnaissance d'activités consiste à déterminer les activités courantes d'une personne ou d'un groupe de personnes, à partir des données (brutes) des capteurs dont est équipée la maison. On peut citer comme exemple la détection de la chute d'une personne. Une maison intelligent repose typiquement sur l'internet des objets (Internet of Things, ou IoT). De nombreuses données sont produites, pouvant contenir des informations privées ou sensibles. Une partie de ces données doit être partagée avec l'extérieur, ce qui peut poser des problèmes de confidentialité. Enfin, pour interragir avec la maison intelligente, un moyen naturel pour l'utilisateur est d'utiliser le dialogue, sujet traité par les systèmes de dialogue.Ce travail de thèse propose des contributions sur ces trois versants, la plupart basées sur l'apprentissage profond
Ambient assisted living aims to support the aging population. This is particularly the case with smart homes, equipped with multiple connected sensors, which enables to extend home care for the elderly. The manuscript begins by introducing the general problem of smart homes, after presenting further the three sub-themes that are the subject of the thesis, namely the activity recognition, privacy and dialogue systems.Activity recognition is the process of determining the day-to-day activities of a person or a group of people from the (raw) sensor data that the home is equipped with. An example of this is the detection of a person's fall. A smart home is typically based on the Internet of Things (IoT). Many data are produced, which may contain private or sensitive information. Some of this data must be shared externally, which may pose privacy issues. Finally, a natural way of communication for the user is to use the dialogue to interact with the smart home via dialogue manager.This thesis proposes contributions on these three sides, most of them based on deep learning

Avec le nombre croissant d'utilisateurs novices des applications informatiques, le besoin d'une aide efficace est devenu critique. Afin de répondre à ce besoins, nous suggérons d'utiliser un Agent Conversationnel Assistant (ACA), c'est-à-dire une interface permettant l'utilisation de la langue naturelle (en effet celle-ci est utilisée spontanément dès qu'un problème surgit) ainsi qu'une présence rassurante pour les utilisateurs.Une étude préliminaire détaille la constitution (en combinant la collecte et l'utilisation de thesaurus) d'un corpus de requêtes dont nous justifions le besoin. Ce corpus de 11626 requêtes est comparé avec d'autres corpus existants et nous montrons qu'il couvre le domaine étudié d'aide et que de plus, il contient des requêtes portant d'une part sur le contrôle de l'application et d'autre part des phrases de 'clavardage'. Ce corpus fournit une base saine pour la conception d'un analyseur syntactico-sémantique de requêtes en langage naturel, utilisant un jeu de classes (keys) sémantiques, un jeu de règles d'analyse et un jeu de règles de transformation. En entrée, les requêtes sont exprimées dans un langage formel (DAFT) pour lequel nous proposons une syntaxe et une sémantique. L'analyseur est alors évalué en comparant une annotation manuelle avec les requêtes produites automatiquement et nous étudions l'usage de techniques d'apprentissage supervisé afin d'identifier les classes d'activités conversationnelles. La méthodologie employée est validée via l'intégration d'un ACA dans une application Web existante , dédiée au prototypage collectif de la musique sur Internet. Enfin, nous décrivons l'architecture requise pour implémenter un agent rationnel qui a pour rôle de définir les réactions aux requêtes formelles des usagers, exprimées en DAFT ainsi que le modèle de l'application assistée, mettant ainsi en lumière le besoin d'un modèle cognitif.

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In Brazil and in Goiás there are numerous programs aimed at family agriculture, among them rural extension, with characteristics in its design and application that are problematic. This study shows that the problems are related to the lack of compliance with constitutional and legal determinations, lack of systemic concepts in the management of agricultural properties, as well as a lack of regional specialization that considers the knowledge of small rural producers and that can bring benefits to the chain Productive. What is perceived is a mistaken conception of such policies by starting from an erroneous conception of public function. And although it is a practical, enforcement and law-making observation, it has its best study, in a more detailed way, from the theoretical frameworks used, namely, Anthony Giddens, Ricardo Abramovay and Amartya Sen, with emphasis on the call Reflective modernity and development, based on economic, social, political and cultural concepts. After analyzing the policies of ATERs, we propose to present a policy currently employed in pilot projects by the state of Goiás, as a result of research and improvements for decades of activity of EMATER - GO - Technical Assistance and Rural Extension Company in Goiás. Results and how they have collaborated for a productive chain on a macroscopic scale is the ultimate goal to demonstrate that a new way of carrying out technical assistance and rural extension programs can and should be urgently implemented throughout the country as a development policy under the most Different aspects. Methodologically, the present research was based mainly on bibliographical readings of works and sites that bring elements related to the theme.
No Brasil e em Goiás há inúmeros programas voltados para a agricultura familiar, entre eles a extensão rural, com características em sua concepção e aplicação que são problemáticas. Este estudo mostra que os problemas estão relacionados à ausência de cumprimento de determinações constitucionais e legais, falta de conceitos sistêmicos na gestão das propriedades agrícolas, bem como uma ausência de especialização regional que contemple os conhecimentos de pequenos produtores rurais e que podem trazer benefícios à cadeia produtiva. O que se percebe é uma concepção equivocada de tais políticas por partir de uma errada concepção de função pública. E embora seja uma constatação de ordem prática, de aplicação e constituição da lei, tem seu melhor estudo, de forma mais detalhada, a partir dos marcos teóricos utilizados, quais sejam, Anthony Giddens, Ricardo Abramovay e Amartya Sen, com destaque para a chamada modernidade reflexiva e desenvolvimento, calcada a partir de conceitos econômicos, sociais, políticos e culturais. Para tanto, após uma análise das políticas de ATERs, propomos apresentar uma política atualmente empregada em projetos piloto pelo estado de Goiás, fruto de pesquisas e melhoramentos por décadas de atividade da EMATER – GO – Empresa de Assistência Técnica e Extensão Rural em Goiás. Seus resultados e como têm colaborado para uma cadeia produtiva em escala macroscópica é o objetivo final, para demonstrar que uma nova forma de realizar programas de assistência técnica e extensão rural pode e deve ser implantada com urgência em todo o país como política de desenvolvimento sob os mais diversos aspectos. Metodologicamente, a presente pesquisa fundamentou-se essencialmente em leituras bibliográficas de obras e sítios que trazem elementos relacionados ao tema.

Aujourd'hui, un utilisateur peut interagir avec des assistants virtuels, comme Alexa, Siri ou Cortana, pour accomplir des tâches dans un environnement numérique. Dans ces systèmes, les liens entre des ordres exprimés en langage naturel et leurs réalisations concrètes sont précisées lors de la phase de conception. Une approche plus adaptative consisterait à laisser l'utilisateur donner des instructions en langage naturel ou des démonstrations lorsqu'une tâche est inconnue de l'assistant. Une solution adaptative devrait ainsi permettre à l'assistant d'agir sur un environnement numérique plus vaste composé de multiples domaines d'application et de mieux répondre aux besoins des utilisateurs. Des systèmes robotiques, inspirés par des études portant sur le développement du langage chez l'humain, ont déjà été développés pour fournir de telles capacités d'adaptation. Ici, nous étendons cette approche à l'interaction humaine avec un assistant virtuel qui peut, premièrement, apprendre le lien entre des commandes verbales et la réalisation d'actions basiques d'un domaine applicatif spécifique. Ensuite, il peut apprendre des liens plus complexes en combinant ses connaissances procédurales précédemment acquises en interaction avec l'utilisateur. La flexibilité du système est démontrée par sa forte adaptabilité au langage naturel, sa capacité à apprendre des actions dans de nouveaux domaines (Email, Wikipedia,...), et à former des connaissances procédurales hybrides en utilisant plusieurs services numériques, par exemple, en combinant une recherche Wikipédia avec un service de courrier électronique
Today users can interact with popular virtual assistants such as Siri to accomplish their tasks on a digital environment. In these systems, links between natural language requests and their concrete realizations are specified at the conception phase. A more adaptive approach would be to allow the user to provide natural language instructions or demonstrations when a task is unknown by the assistant. An adaptive solution should allow the virtual assistant to operate a much larger digital environment composed of multiple application domains and providers and better match user needs. We have previously developed robotic systems, inspired by human language developmental studies, that provide such a usage-based adaptive capacity. Here we extend this approach to human interaction with a virtual assistant that can first learn the mapping between verbal commands and basic action semantics of a specific domain. Then, it can learn higher level mapping by combining previously learned procedural knowledge in interaction with the user. The flexibility of the system is demonstrated as the virtual assistant can learn actions in a new domains (Email, Wikipedia,...), and can then learn how email and Wikipedia basic procedures can be combined to form hybrid procedural knowledge

African American Studies
M.A.
This study was designed to assess a PWIs residential life department's initiative to provide their Resident Assistants (RAs) an opportunity to discuss race through an inter-group dialogue session. I argue that any activity that focuses on race needs to be grounded in a social justice framework. This is because this framework educates individuals about systematic social, political, and economic issues that plague our society. A social justice grounding also fosters a disposition that desires to eliminate institutionalized discrimination. As such, this study sought to answer the following research questions: how did this inter-group dialogue impact the RAs ability to recognize race-related issues in the United States and did this inter-group dialogue foster a social justice perspective among the RAs that participated? Through a content analysis of ten in-depth, semi-structured interviews with RAs who participated in the dialogue the findings suggest that RAs did gain an understanding of how different lived experiences effect how someone views societal race issues, but the inter-group dialogue did not foster a transformative perspective among RAs that were not already grounded in social justice. Recommendations to improve future sessions are provided.
Temple University--Theses

Работа представляет результаты изучения социальных телевизионных проектов и их влияния на формирование у телезрителей предпосылок к выстраиванию общественного диалога. Исследование выполнено на материале федеральных и региональных социальных телепроектов «Город добрых людей» и «За дело». В исследовании была изучена историческая предпосылка социального телепроекта «Город добрых людей». Доказано, что именно события 2019 года в сквере у драматического театра в Екатеринбурге послужили причиной создания социального телепроекта «Город добрых людей» на телеканале «4 канал». В ходе исследования доказано, что милосердие и сегодня не теряет актуальности, а проект «Город добрых людей» является проводником милосердия в социум, рассказывая о добровольческой помощи.
The paper presents the results of studying social television projects and their impact on the formation of prerequisites for building a public dialogue among viewers. The study was carried out on the material of federal and regional social TV projects «City of good people» and «For the cause». The study examined the historical background of the social TV project «City of Good People». It is proved that the events of 2019 in the square near the drama Theater in Yekaterinburg were the reason for the creation of the social TV project «City of good People « on the channel «4 Channel». In the course of the study, it is proved that charity is still relevant today, and the project «City of Good People» is a guide of charity to society, telling about voluntary assistance.

This paper researches how different amounts of data affect different word vector models for classification of dialog system user input. A hypothesis is tested that there is a data threshold for dense vector models to reach the state-of-the-art performance that have been shown with recent research, and that character-level n-gram word-vector classifiers are especially suited for Swedish classifiers–because of compounding and the character-level n-gram model ability to vectorize out-of-vocabulary words. Also, a second hypothesis is put forward that models trained with single statements are more suitable for chat user input classification than models trained with full conversations. The results are not able to support neither of our hypotheses but show that sparse vector models perform very well on the binary classification tasks used. Further, the results show that 799,544 words of data is insufficient for training dense vector models but that training the models with full conversations is sufficient for single statement classification as the single-statement- trained models do not show any improvement in classifying single statements.
Detta arbete undersöker hur olika datamängder påverkar olika slags ordvektormodeller för klassificering av indata till dialogsystem. Hypotesen att det finns ett tröskelvärde för träningsdatamängden där täta ordvektormodeller när den högsta moderna utvecklingsnivån samt att n-gram-ordvektor-klassificerare med bokstavs-noggrannhet lämpar sig särskilt väl för svenska klassificerare söks bevisas med stöd i att sammansättningar är särskilt produktiva i svenskan och att bokstavs-noggrannhet i modellerna gör att tidigare osedda ord kan klassificeras. Dessutom utvärderas hypotesen att klassificerare som tränas med enkla påståenden är bättre lämpade att klassificera indata i chattkonversationer än klassificerare som tränats med hela chattkonversationer. Resultaten stödjer ingendera hypotes utan visar istället att glesa vektormodeller presterar väldigt väl i de genomförda klassificeringstesterna. Utöver detta visar resultaten att datamängden 799 544 ord inte räcker till för att träna täta ordvektormodeller väl men att konversationer räcker gott och väl för att träna modeller för klassificering av frågor och påståenden i chattkonversationer, detta eftersom de modeller som tränats med användarindata, påstående för påstående, snarare än hela chattkonversationer, inte resulterar i bättre klassificerare för chattpåståenden.

The implementation of chatbots and service services is becoming more common. The reason for this is that they are constantly available to answer questions, no matter what time it is. To make one chatbot is not just to write questions and specific answers. Communicating with one chatbot should, as much as possible, look like communicating with another human. The purpose of this report is to create a chatbot that will be used at Luleå university of technology and that will answer questions about system science. Furthermore, the goal is to investigate which design principles should be implemented, their possible concretization, when making chatbots, and possibly coming to new principles. The method used to make the chatbot is Design Science Research Methodology (DSRM). DSRM focuses on solving the problem by creating an IT artifact, which in this case is a chatbot. The result of this work is a created chatbot and design principles that were implemented during the development process.

Chat-bots are computer programs designed to conduct textual or audible conversations with a single user. The job of a chat-bot is to be able to find the best response for any request the user issues. The best response is considered to answer the question and contain relevant information while following grammatical and lexical rules. Modern chat-bots often have trouble accomplishing all these tasks. State-of-the-art approaches, such as deep learning, and large datasets help chat-bots tackle this problem better. While there is a number of different approaches that can be applied for different kind of bots, datasets of suitable size are not always available. In this work, we introduce and evaluate a method of expanding the size of datasets. This will allow chat-bots, in combination with a good learning algorithm, to achieve higher precision while handling their tasks. The expansion method uses the continual learning approach that allows the bot to expand its own dataset while holding conversations with its users. In this work we test continual learning with IBM Watson Assistant chat-bot as well as a custom case study chat-bot implementation. We conduct the testing using a smaller and a larger datasets to find out if continual learning stays effective as the dataset size increases. The results show that the more conversations the chat-bot holds, the better it gets at guessing the intent of the user. They also show that continual learning works well for larger and smaller datasets, but the effect depends on the specifics of the chat-bot implementation. While continual learning makes good results better, it also turns bad results into worse ones, thus the chat-bot should be manually calibrated should the precision of the original results, measured before the expansion, decrease.

This thesis focuses on analysis, definition and description of mobile personal assistants as a phenomenon emerging in past few years. Mobile personal assistants are first mentioned in the context of computational linguistics and information needs, which is one of the motivations to use them. Main interest of this thesis is an introduction of the core technologies for the natural language communication between the assistant and its user, followed by an introduction of host environments and possible usage. The thesis also presents the limitations and risks resulting from using them, which are in some ways affecting their usability. Beside the analysis the main focus is on the design and implementation of the natural language understanding (NLU) system, which can be used in particular personal assistant application. This system is implemented as a web service and consists of an annotation scheme with a set of components. The results show that the system architecture and tools used are suitable solution for the construction of a basic NLU system, which has been created and which is in the compliance with the requested parameters. It is still difficult task to achieve high precision, which depends on many factors including the amount of training data, which was very small in this case. However, the resulting application is a solid starting point for its further development and extensions.

La première partie de l’étude est consacrée à l’invocation, intra et extra muros, du droit à un procès équitable. Sont analysés ainsi, dans un premier temps, l’applicabilité directe de l’article 6 et la subsidiarité de la Convention par rapport au droit national et de la Cour Européenne des Droits de l’Homme par rapport aux juridictions nationales. Le droit à un procès équitable étant un droit jurisprudentiel, l’étude se focalise, dans un second temps, sur l’invocabilité des arrêts de la Cour Européenne et plus précisément sur l’invocabilité directe de l’arrêt qui constate une violation du droit à un procès équitable dans une affaire mettant en cause l’Etat et l’invocabilité de l’interprétation conforme à l’arrêt qui interprète l’article 6 dans une affaire mettant en cause un Etat tiers. L’introduction dans l’ordre juridique français et hellénique de la possibilité de réexamen de la décision pénale définitive rendue en violation de la Convention a fait naitre un nouveau droit d’accès à la Cour de cassation lequel trouve son terrain de prédilection aux violations de l’article 6 et constitue peut-être le pas le plus important pour le respect du droit à un procès équitable après l’acceptation (par la France et la Grèce) du droit de recours individuel. Quant au faible fondement de l’autorité de la chose interprétée par la Cour Européenne, qui est d’ailleurs un concept d’origine communautaire, cela explique pourquoi un dialogue indirect entre la Cour Européenne et la Cour de cassation est possible sans pour autant changer en rien l’invocabilité de l’interprétation conforme et le fait que l’existence d’un précédent oblige la Cour de cassation à motiver l’interprétation divergente qu’elle a adoptée.La seconde partie de l’étude, qui est plus volumineuse, est consacrée aux garanties de bonne administration de la justice (article 6§1), à la présomption d’innocence (article 6§2), aux droits qui trouvent leur fondement conventionnel dans l’article 6§1 mais leur fondement logique dans la présomption d’innocence et aux droits de la défense (article 6§3). Sont ainsi analysés le droit à un tribunal indépendant, impartial et établi par la loi, le délai raisonnable, le principe de l’égalité des armes, le droit à une procédure contradictoire, le droit de la défense d’avoir la parole en dernier, la publicité de l’audience et du prononcé des jugements et arrêts, l’obligation de motivation des décisions, la présomption d’innocence, dans sa dimension procédurale et personnelle, le « droit au mensonge », le droit de l’accusé de se taire et de ne pas contribuer à son auto-incrimination, son droit d’être informé de la nature et de la cause de l’accusation et de la requalification envisagée des faits, son droit au temps et aux facilités nécessaires à la préparation de la défense, y compris notamment la confidentialité de ses communications avec son avocat et le droit d’accès au dossier, son droit de comparaître en personne au procès, le droit de la défense avec ou sans l’assistance d’un avocat, le droit de l’accusé d’être représenté en son absence par son avocat, le droit à l’assistance gratuite d’un avocat lorsque la situation économique de l’accusé ne permet pas le recours à l’assistance d’un avocat mais les intérêts de la justice l’exigent, le droit d’interroger ou faire interroger les témoins à charge et d’obtenir la convocation et l’interrogation des témoins à décharge dans les mêmes conditions que les témoins à charge et le droit à l’interprétation et à la traduction des pièces essentielles du dossier. L’analyse est basée sur la jurisprudence strasbourgeoise et centrée sur la position qu’adoptent la Cour de cassation française et l’Aréopage
The first party of the study is dedicated to the invocation of the right to a fair trial intra and extra muros and, on this basis, it focuses on the direct applicability of Article 6 and the subsidiarity of the Convention and of the European Court of Human Rights. Because of the fact that the right to a fair trial is a ‘‘judge-made law’’, the study also focuses on the invocability of the judgments of the European Court and more precisely on the direct invocability of the European Court’s judgment finding that there has been a violation of the Convention and on the request for an interpretation in accordance with the European Court’s decisions. The possibility of reviewing the criminal judgment made in violation of the Convention has generated a new right of access to the Court of cassation which particularly concerns the violations of the right to a fair trial and is probably the most important step for the respect of the right to a fair trial after enabling the right of individual petition. As for the weak conventional basis of the authority of res interpretata (“autorité de la chose interprétée”), this fact explains why an indirect dialogue between the ECHR and the Court of cassation is possible but doesn’t affect the applicant’s right to request an interpretation in accordance with the Court’s decisions and the duty of the Court of cassation to explain why it has decided to depart from the (non-binding) precedent.The second party of the study is bigger than the first one and is dedicated to the guarantees of the proper administration of justice (Article 6§1), the presumption of innocence (Article 6§2), the rights which find their conventional basis on the Article 6§1 but their logical explanation to the presumption of innocence and the rights of defence (Article 6§3). More precisely, the second party of the study is analyzing the right to an independent and impartial tribunal established by law, the right to a hearing within a reasonable time, the principle of equality of arms, the right to adversarial proceedings, the right of the defence to the last word, the right to a public hearing and a public pronouncement of the judgement, the judge’s duty to state the reasons for his decision, the presumption of innocence, in both its procedural and personal dimensions, the accused’s right to lie, his right to remain silent, his right against self-incrimination, his right to be informed of the nature and the cause of the accusation and the potential re-characterisation of the facts, his right to have adequate time and facilities for the preparation of the defence, including in particular the access to the case-file and the free and confidential communication with his lawyer, his right to appear in person at the trial, his right to defend either in person or through legal assistance, his right to be represented by his counsel, his right to free legal aid if he hasn’t sufficient means to pay for legal assistance but the interests of justice so require, his right to examine or have examined witnesses against him and to obtain the attendance and examination of witnesses on his behalf under the same conditions as witnesses against him and his right to the free assistance of an interpreter and to the translation of the key documents. The analysis is based on the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights and focuses on the position taken by the French and the Greek Court of Cassation (Areopagus) on each one of the above mentioned rights

Following the attention given by the Jomtien Declaration to the need for partnerships and collaboration in the promotion of educational improvement (World Declaration on Education for All, 1990), developing countries have initiated several partnership programmes with many international donor agencies. These partnerships for educational development in Africa vary in scale, character and context, and the institutional and policy frameworks are now more demanding. The conception and practice of partnership has been a challenge primarily because, how the policy/organisational framework, design and practice of partnerships influence the outcome of such collaborations remains poorly understood. In this study I examined the framework, construction and practice of partnerships using the Japan International Cooperation Agency’s (JICA) educational partnership programmes in Ghana and South Africa as case studies. I studied these two examples of JICA funded programmes in order to determine the opportunities and constraints that such partnerships offer. Data was collected through interviews with 12 key officials using semi-structured questions and the analysis of documents. Such documents as project proposals, monitoring and evaluation reports, minutes of stakeholders’ meetings and newsletters of each of the two case studies were reviewed. Observations of some project activities such as stakeholders’ meetings, training workshops and conferences were also conducted for the purpose of validation. Using the concept of ‘surface and genuine partnership’ proposed by Mkandawire (1996) and Odora Hoppers (2001), data were analysed focusing on the interactive effects of partners on the outcomes of the two partnership programmes. Evidence gathered from this study suggests that while partnerships are key they are often narrowly conceptualised for two reasons: First, the common conception of partnerships as ‘bringing resources together’ with little or no recognition of the interactive effect of partners on their success is limiting. This is mainly because partnership engagement may go beyond the resource agenda to issues of mutual respect, power relations, nature of dialogue and professional as well as interpersonal relationships. Second, partnerships normally focus on supply-driven opportunities rather than stimulating demand among immediate beneficiaries. The need of creating sustainable capacity building systems for teachers in the long-term is imperative however it requires stimulation of demand among teachers who are the potential users of the knowledge and skills offered by such partnership endeavours. Third, I found that the initial model and construction of a partnership becomes less significant if actors practically engage in genuine partnership given that: (1) the principles of pure dialogue will lead to flexibility, which allows reconstruction as the partnership evolves and (2) the practice of shared culture and interest will permit creative use of challenges in devising innovative approaches. The main lesson presented in this study is the revelation that no mater how well intended and designed a partnership arrangement is, its subsequent implementation can adversely be affected by the practices at both the individual and organisational levels. The characterisation of the implementation process of the partnership described in this dissertation is a mixed bag of stimulating and limiting factors. It therefore presents a crucial responsibility to collaborators to deliberately devise mechanisms that will maximise the former and at the same time minimise the later. The significance of this study is that both policymakers and donor agencies involved in partnership arrangements as well as researchers need to rethink the conceptualisation of the term partnership (Oyelaran-Oyeyinka, 2005) and re-examine the policy and institutional context (Azar, Harpring, Cohen&Leu, 2004; Hall, R. 2002) under which such educational development partnership ventures thrive.
Dissertation (MEd (Curriculum and Instructional Design and Development))--University of Pretoria, 2008.
Curriculum Studies
unrestricted

碩士
國立中央大學
資訊工程學系
107
In recent years, E-Learning has become more and more popular because of being able to let students learn anytime and anywhere. Compared with traditional classroom learning, students can adjust their learning more casually according to their own learning conditions. It can increase the efficiency of their learning. For a good e-learning platform, on-line tutor service is need. But hiring human tutors will cost a lot due to large number of students in whole time use. Therefore, we develop a chatbot system to share some of the work of human tutors: solve problems in the course for students and provide FAQ of the operation in the e-learning platform. It can even provide service to students via voice dialogue robots. With our system, students can get a more complete e-learning environment. The chatbot proposed in this paper is a retrieval-based model. After the user's input is segmented by the Hidden Markov Model to get the keywords, and the keywords are transmitted through the Word2vec model. The Word2Vec Model compares the similarity of the conversation topics defined in each database to achieve keyword extraction and classification for user conversations

The work is engaged in pastoral care of ill people in the hospitals in Czech Republic. The theoretic part shows up the concept of illness, basic needs of ill people and the concept of pastoral care of ill people in the view of chosen authors. The practical part contains the comparison of two forms of pastoral care of ill people. It is the service of five pastoral assistants, who are exercising their service in hospitals, and the service of five priests, who are visiting hospitals within their service in parishes. The pastoral assistants work in hospital four up to eight hours a day during working days and they exercise the pastoral care in the form of accompanying of ill people {--} that means they are in a dialogue with ill people and they participate in their life situations. The priests visit hospitals mainly in order to sacrament dispense. By the confrontation of the service of both groups of persons involved in pastoral care of ill people with that, what chosen authors write about this service, appeared that only the pastoral assistants fulfil the intention of the pastoral care of ill people, that is the accompanying of ill people in their difficult situation of illness.