Special Interest Group on Dialogue of the Association for Computational Linguistics
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The symposium will be held at the Sea Crest Oceanfront Resort and Conference Center in North Falmouth, MA (Cape Cod).
Housing reservations are due October 2, 2000. Housing information is available from the AAAI symposium page. Sea Crest is approximately two hours from the Boston and Providence airports. Regular bus transportation is available from the Boston airport via Bonanza Bus (508-548-7588). (Note: although the AAAI symposium page recommends car rental, traffic can be awful and you may wish to reconsider.)
Preregistration is required. The registration deadline is September 20, 2000. (Registrations for authors and other invited participants must be received by Sept. 6.)
After you register, be sure to check out the housing information in the purple registration brochure or on the AAAI symposium page. Housing reservations are due October 2, 2000.
There are three ways to register:
2000 Fall Symposium Series
AAAI
445 Burgess Drive
Menlo Park, CA 94025
Telephone: (650) 328-3123
Fax: (650) 321-4457
See the AAAI symposium page for details on methods of payment and cancellation information.
Email registration is not recommended due to security issues.
Studies of human tutoring have argued the importance of conversation between the student and the tutor in making tutoring interactions successful, suggesting that intelligent tutoring systems will be more effective if they can engage in dialogues with students. Although building highly interactive dialogue-based systems presents a wide range of new computational challenges, recent advances in computational linguistics have made it possible to make significant strides towards the development of dialogue- based tutors in both educational and industrial settings. Already several large-scale efforts towards the construction of such systems are in progress at a variety of universities worldwide, many of which will be represented at the symposium.
The overall focus of the symposium will be the design, implementation and evaluation of effective dialogue-based intelligent tutoring systems (ITSs). We received many high- quality submissions and are looking forward to an exciting symposium covering a wide range of issues. The working notes include papers on architectures for dialogue-based ITSs, approaches to dialogue management, robust language understanding techniques, practical approaches to natural language generation, authoring tools, student modeling, analysis of human tutorial dialogues, and system evaluation.
We invite participation from researchers in many areas of artificial intelligence, including intelligent tutoring system development, computational linguistics, planning, user and student modeling, knowledge representation and probabilistic reasoning. We also encourage participation from the related fields of cognitive science, applied cognitive psychology and educational technology.
Our format will emphasize discussion and group participation through panel discussions and demo and poster sessions describing both implemented systems and work in progress. Our hope is that this symposium will solidify the community of researchers developing tutorial dialogue systems by facilitating the development of a shared vision and promoting the development of shared resources.
In order for your paper to be printed in the working notes, we must receive the following items from you by August 15, 2000:
Hardcopy of your paper
Camera-ready copy is due August 15,
2000. Send one original copy (not a photocopy) printed on a laser printer with
8-1/2 x 11 paper (not A4).
Do not print page numbers on the papers. Label each page lightly on the back in pencil with "tutoring symposium", your name and the page number.
Mail your camera-copy directly to us at:
R. Freedman/C. Rosé
LRDC 8D
University of Pittsburgh
3939 O'Hara St.
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
The paper length was specified in your acceptance letter. Long papers may use up to 9 pages, short papers up to 4.
Papers must be in standard AAAI 2-column format.
(However, ignore the instructions at the end of that Web page about where to send your final copy. Send both the hardcopy and the electronic copy directly to us. The only item to send directly to AAAI is the abstract.)
AAAI provides macros and templates for Latex and Microsoft Word.
Please follow the AAAI format as closely as possible to ensure that your copy can be successfully printed.
Electronic copy of your paper
You must also send us an electronic version of your paper in PDF or Postscript (AAAI prefers PDF). The electronic version must be identical to the printed version. We collect these files and pass them on to AAAI.
If you would also like us to put a link to your paper on the symposium Web page, send us your URL and we would be happy to do so.
Email the electronic version to us at itsdial@pitt.edu.
Name your paper with the first initial followed by the last name of the primary author, along with the year of the symposium and the extension .pdf or .ps (depending upon the file type). Thus, a paper by Jane Doe would be called JDoe00.pdf or JDoe00.ps.
PDF or PostScript files should be set up using letter size (8 1/2 x 11) as the default page size--not A4, and all fonts must be embedded. AAAI recommends that authors use Times, Symbol, and/or Helvetica fonts.
If you use Postscript, make sure to set your driver to "archive" format.
If you are using PDF, set your settings to produce a high-end print PDF file; thus, automatic compression should be set to ZIP/JPEG low compression, the default resolution should be 1,240 dpi, compatibility should be set to Acrobat 3.0, and downsampling should be turned off. If you are using Acrobat Distiller, use v. 3.0 or later. Also check the suggested Acrobat Distiller settings.
If you are using TeX or Latex, you must use Postcript (i.e. Type 1) fonts, not PK bitmapped fonts. For details see the AAAI TeX/Latex instructions.
Electronic version of the abstract
You must submit an
electronic abstract of your paper directly to AAAI via the
AAAI
abstract submission Web form.
The event to choose from the pull-down list is "Fall Symposium Series". For the symposium title, chose "F1: Building Dialogue Systems for Tutorial Applications".
Please let us know if you are unable to use the web-based form.
Permission-to-distribute form
Please print out and send us
the
permission-to-distribute form along with your camera-ready copy.
This form gives AAAI permission to include your paper in a symposium technical report that will become part of AAAI's technical report series.
It is not a copyright release; you do not need to give AAAI the copyright to your paper. Just as for a technical report produced by your institution, a technical report does not count as formal publication. Thus, you are free to publish your paper or a version of it later in a conference or other forum.
There are several advantages to including your paper in a AAAI technical report even though it is not formal publication. First, it gives you a way to cite your paper. Additionally, it allows more people to become aware of your work, as it will appear in AAAI's online index and the technical report itself will be available from AAAI.
If you do not sign the permission-to-distribute form, your paper will appear in the working notes given to attendees at the symposium, but will not appear in the technical report. If you choose this option, please let us know so that we can distinguish this case from a lost form.
A/V form (if needed)
Each meeting room will be equipped with
an overhead projector. If you have other special requests (e.g. data projector,
video recorder, slide projector), please complete the
audio/visual
request form and send it to us at itsdial@pitt.edu.
Although AAAI can provide a data projector, you must bring your own laptop computer and software. Connections to the Internet may be restricted due to cost and availability.
Please note that due to budget restrictions, AAAI may not be able to grant extensive A/V requests.
At least one author must attend the symposium. Author registrations must be sent to AAAI by Sept. 6.
In order to make the symposium a participatory experience rather than a conference, we are asking authors to bring a poster with the details of their work instead of having paper presentations. We are planning to use the time together for panel sessions, demos, and a poster session. Our local committee has assigned every author to one (and in some cases two) panels in their area of interest--see thepreliminary schedule. Please let us know if you have questions or comments.
AAAI will provide poster boards for the posters. They are 30 in. x 40 in. (76 cm x 101 cm).
A limited amount of money is available for full-time students who are
unable to obtain sufficient funding from local sources. If you have not already
done so, please let us know you are interested by August 7.
(If you have
already done so, there's no need to do it again.)
Please send email to either of the co-chairs, Carolyn Rosé ( rosecp@pitt.edu) or Reva Freedman (freedrk@pitt.edu).