In a 20-year period, AR has gone from being viewed as a heavyweight technology to a new medium for a variety of applications. As a result there has been an increasing need for tools to support AR design and development that fully address the needs of non-technologists. From my AR research, I learned that three critical components for these authoring tools are support for an established content pipeline, rapid prototyping, and user experience testing. The history of media teaches us that AR also shares underlying technologies with a variety of more mature media such as film, VR, and the web with existing workflows and tools. Therefore, we created an AR authoring tool that supported these three critical components, and whose design was informed by established approaches in these related domains, allowing developers with a range of technical expertise to explore the AR medium. In this dissertation I present four main contributions. The first was an exploration of the AR design space focused on close collaboration with designers. This work resulted in guidelines for AR authoring tools, and informed the development of the Designer's Augmented Reality Toolkit (DART). These guidelines were validated via internal and external projects. A qualitative study of long term DART use that provided insight into the successes and failures of DART as well as additional understanding of AR authoring needs. Lastly, I trace two main threads to highlight the impact of this work, the development of the AR Second Life system and the creation of the Argon AR web browser.

Sentiment analysis is a field of computational linguistics involving identification, extraction, and classification of opinions, sentiments, and emotions expressed in natural language. Sentiment classification algorithms aim to identify whether the author of a text has a positive or a negative opinion about a topic. One of the main indicators which help to detect the opinion are the words used in the texts. Needless to say, the sentiments expressed in the texts also depend on the syntactic structure and the discourse context. Supervised machine learning approaches to sentiment classification were shown to achieve good results. Classifying texts by emotions requires finer-grained analysis than sentiment classification. In this thesis, we explore the task of emotion and mood classification for blog postings. We propose a novel approach that uses the hierarchy of possible moods to achieve better results than a standard flat classification approach. We also show that using sentiment orientation features improves the performance of classification. We used the LiveJournal blog corpus as a dataset to train and evaluate our method. Another contribution of this work is extracting paraphrases for emotion terms based on the six basics emotions proposed by Ekman (\textit{happiness, anger, sadness, disgust, surprise, fear}). Paraphrases are different ways to express the same information. Algorithms to extract and automatically identify paraphrases are of interest from both linguistic and practical points of view. Our paraphrase extraction method is based on a bootstrapping algorithms that starts with seed words. Unlike in previous work, our algorithm does not need a parallel corpus. In Natural Language Generation (NLG), paraphrasing is employed to create more varied and natural text. In our research, we extract paraphrases for emotions, with the goal of using them to automatically generate emotional texts (such as friendly or hostile texts) for conversations between intelligent agents and characters in educational games. Nowadays, online services are popular in many disciplines such as: e-learning, interactive games, educational games, stock market, chat rooms and so on. NLG methods can be used in order to generate more interesting and normal texts for such applications. Generating text with emotions is one of the contributions of our work. In the last part of this thesis, we give an overview of NLG from an applied system's points of view. We discuss when NLG techniques can be used; we explained the requirements analysis and specification of NLG systems. We also, describe the main NLG tasks of content determination, discourse planning, sentence aggregation, lexicalization, referring expression generation, and linguistic realisation. Moreover, we describe our Authoring Tool that we developed in order to allow writers without programming skills to automatically generate texts for educational games. We develop an NLG system that can generate text with different emotions. To do this, we introduce our pattern-based model for generation. We show our model starts with initial patterns, then constructs extended patterns from which we choose ``final'' patterns that are suitable for generating emotion sentences. A user can generate sentences to express the desired emotions by using our patterns. Alternatively, the user can use our Authoring Tool to generate sentences with emotions. Our acquired paraphrases will be employed by the tool in order to generate more varied outputs.

Sentiment analysis is a field of computational linguistics involving identification, extraction, and classification of opinions, sentiments, and emotions expressed in natural language. Sentiment classification algorithms aim to identify whether the author of a text has a positive or a negative opinion about a topic. One of the main indicators which help to detect the opinion are the words used in the texts. Needless to say, the sentiments expressed in the texts also depend on the syntactic structure and the discourse context. Supervised machine learning approaches to sentiment classification were shown to achieve good results. Classifying texts by emotions requires finer-grained analysis than sentiment classification. In this thesis, we explore the task of emotion and mood classification for blog postings. We propose a novel approach that uses the hierarchy of possible moods to achieve better results than a standard flat classification approach. We also show that using sentiment orientation features improves the performance of classification. We used the LiveJournal blog corpus as a dataset to train and evaluate our method. Another contribution of this work is extracting paraphrases for emotion terms based on the six basics emotions proposed by Ekman (\textit{happiness, anger, sadness, disgust, surprise, fear}). Paraphrases are different ways to express the same information. Algorithms to extract and automatically identify paraphrases are of interest from both linguistic and practical points of view. Our paraphrase extraction method is based on a bootstrapping algorithms that starts with seed words. Unlike in previous work, our algorithm does not need a parallel corpus. In Natural Language Generation (NLG), paraphrasing is employed to create more varied and natural text. In our research, we extract paraphrases for emotions, with the goal of using them to automatically generate emotional texts (such as friendly or hostile texts) for conversations between intelligent agents and characters in educational games. Nowadays, online services are popular in many disciplines such as: e-learning, interactive games, educational games, stock market, chat rooms and so on. NLG methods can be used in order to generate more interesting and normal texts for such applications. Generating text with emotions is one of the contributions of our work. In the last part of this thesis, we give an overview of NLG from an applied system's points of view. We discuss when NLG techniques can be used; we explained the requirements analysis and specification of NLG systems. We also, describe the main NLG tasks of content determination, discourse planning, sentence aggregation, lexicalization, referring expression generation, and linguistic realisation. Moreover, we describe our Authoring Tool that we developed in order to allow writers without programming skills to automatically generate texts for educational games. We develop an NLG system that can generate text with different emotions. To do this, we introduce our pattern-based model for generation. We show our model starts with initial patterns, then constructs extended patterns from which we choose ``final'' patterns that are suitable for generating emotion sentences. A user can generate sentences to express the desired emotions by using our patterns. Alternatively, the user can use our Authoring Tool to generate sentences with emotions. Our acquired paraphrases will be employed by the tool in order to generate more varied outputs.

No description available.

This essay aims to explore Evelina’s abilities to self-author her life as a tool of agency, self-authoring means to be able to write your own life. Evelina was written by Frances Burney in 1778 and tells the story of a young orphan lady who visits London. She is inexperienced and makes mistakes that can be seen as fatal in the social sphere. Despite that she reflects on her mistakes and reactions and gains agency in the end. One of her bigger problems is her beauty. It puts her in situations she almost cannot control.  She becomes a sexual prey quite easily. Jane Eyre written by Charlotte Bronte in 1847 is relevant for this essay because a lot of criticism has been made about the threats and abilities that Jane’s agency has. The theoretical framework for this essay is based on the works by eight different critics: Diana Meyers, Judith Butler, Jane Spencer, Ellen Moers, Virginia Woolf, Gayatri Spivak, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar. The framework explains what agency and gendered act is, it also explains the historical context behind Burney and Bronte. Lastly it discusses how the other half of the two heroines has to disappear in order for them to achieve agency. The conclusion for this essay is that Evelina attains agency though her reactions and behavior, even if she looks at herself trough the eyes of another, or in other words attains a God-like perspective, she manages to self-author her life and herself in to being.

Sentiment analysis is a field of computational linguistics involving identification, extraction, and classification of opinions, sentiments, and emotions expressed in natural language. Sentiment classification algorithms aim to identify whether the author of a text has a positive or a negative opinion about a topic. One of the main indicators which help to detect the opinion are the words used in the texts. Needless to say, the sentiments expressed in the texts also depend on the syntactic structure and the discourse context. Supervised machine learning approaches to sentiment classification were shown to achieve good results. Classifying texts by emotions requires finer-grained analysis than sentiment classification. In this thesis, we explore the task of emotion and mood classification for blog postings. We propose a novel approach that uses the hierarchy of possible moods to achieve better results than a standard flat classification approach. We also show that using sentiment orientation features improves the performance of classification. We used the LiveJournal blog corpus as a dataset to train and evaluate our method. Another contribution of this work is extracting paraphrases for emotion terms based on the six basics emotions proposed by Ekman (\textit{happiness, anger, sadness, disgust, surprise, fear}). Paraphrases are different ways to express the same information. Algorithms to extract and automatically identify paraphrases are of interest from both linguistic and practical points of view. Our paraphrase extraction method is based on a bootstrapping algorithms that starts with seed words. Unlike in previous work, our algorithm does not need a parallel corpus. In Natural Language Generation (NLG), paraphrasing is employed to create more varied and natural text. In our research, we extract paraphrases for emotions, with the goal of using them to automatically generate emotional texts (such as friendly or hostile texts) for conversations between intelligent agents and characters in educational games. Nowadays, online services are popular in many disciplines such as: e-learning, interactive games, educational games, stock market, chat rooms and so on. NLG methods can be used in order to generate more interesting and normal texts for such applications. Generating text with emotions is one of the contributions of our work. In the last part of this thesis, we give an overview of NLG from an applied system's points of view. We discuss when NLG techniques can be used; we explained the requirements analysis and specification of NLG systems. We also, describe the main NLG tasks of content determination, discourse planning, sentence aggregation, lexicalization, referring expression generation, and linguistic realisation. Moreover, we describe our Authoring Tool that we developed in order to allow writers without programming skills to automatically generate texts for educational games. We develop an NLG system that can generate text with different emotions. To do this, we introduce our pattern-based model for generation. We show our model starts with initial patterns, then constructs extended patterns from which we choose ``final'' patterns that are suitable for generating emotion sentences. A user can generate sentences to express the desired emotions by using our patterns. Alternatively, the user can use our Authoring Tool to generate sentences with emotions. Our acquired paraphrases will be employed by the tool in order to generate more varied outputs.

Nowadays the World Wide Web increasingly provides rich multimedia contents to its users.In order to further enhance the experience of web-users, researchers have sought solutions to integrate yet another modality into the web experience by augmenting web content with haptic properties. In those applications, users are able to interact with web virtual environments (such as games and e-learning systems) enriched with haptic contents. However, it is not easy for designers without pro cient web programming background and basic knowledge regarding haptics, to develop a web application with haptic content enabled. Additionally, there is currently no standard to describe and reuse a well-described haptic application which can be played in web browsers. In this thesis, I present an MPEG-V based authoring tool for facilitating the development procedure of haptics-enabled web applications. The system provides an interface for users to create their own application, add custom 3D models, and modify their graphic and haptic properties. Haptic properties include the speci cation of collision detection mechanism and object surface properties which in turn directly a ect the force simulations. Finally, the user is able to export a haptic-enabled 3D scene in a standard MPEG-V format which can be reconstructed in a web haptic player. A detailed experiment is conducted to evaluate the force simulations, application development process and design of user interface. The results not only verify my proposed methodology, but also show the high acceptance level by users with all levels of programming knowledge of the system.

Thesis (M.S.)--Worcester Polytechnic Institute. / Keywords: Intelligent Tutoring Systems; Model Tracing; Machine Learning; Artificial Intelligence; Programming by Demonstration. Includes bibliographical references.

Magister Scientiae - MSc (Computer Science) / This thesis describes the development cycles of an authoring tool that generalises scenario creation for SignSupport. SignSupport is a mobile communication tool for Deaf people that currently runs on an Android smartphone. The authoring tool is computer-based software that helps a domain expert, with little or no programming skills, design and populate a limited domain conversation scenario between a Deaf person and a hearing person, e.g., when a Deaf patient collects medication at a hospital pharmacy or when a Deaf learner is taking a computer literacy course. SignSupport provides instructions to the Deaf person in signed language videos on a mobile device. The authoring tool enables the creation and population of such scenarios on a computer for subsequent 'playback' on a mobile device. The output of this authoring tool is an XML script, alongside a repository of media les that can be used to render the SignSupport mobile app on any platform. Our concern was to iteratively develop the user interface for the authoring tool, focusing on the domain experts who create the overall flow and content for a given scenario. We had four development iterations, where the rst three were evaluated for usability; for both pharmacy and ICDL course scenarios with purposive sampling. The fourth iteration focused on using the authoring tool to design an ICDL practise mobile app, recording the necessary SASL videos and using an XML parser to render the designs XML script into an Android app. The research conducted herein leveraged multiple approaches to content authoring and generalisation; and further that software generalisation can improve accessibility and a ordability for the ultimate end users. The thesis concludes with a summary of recommendations and lessons learnt.

Este trabalho descreve o tema de pesquisa desenvolvido em novel de Dissertação de Mestrado, que é o estudo de uma ferramenta de autoria em multimídia, voltada para a elaboração de jogos educativos computadorizados. Esta ferramenta aproveita-se das vantagens dos jogos educativos computadorizados como alternativa para a utilização da informática na escola, alem de possibilitar que o professor ou o aluno elabore seus jogos, visando assim, auxiliar na construção de seu próprio conhecimento. A utilização de uma ferramenta de autoria para a elaboração de software educacional pode facilitar o trabalho dos professores, propiciando-os a criação de seus pr6prios softwares que servirão como material de apoio as suas aulas. Além disso, a utilização da multimídia traz inúmeras vantagens, possibilitando que o ensino tome-se mais rico e desafiador, incentivando os alunos a estudar e aprender. Alem do estudo da utilização das ferramentas de autoria multimídia no desenvolvimento de software educacional, o presente trabalho também aborda o estudo e definição de uma ferramenta que permita que os usuários (professores e/ou alunos) possam construir jogos para serem utilizados em sala de aula ou fora do ambiente escolar, reforçando e auxiliando no processo de aquisição do conhecimento. Estes jogos podem ser criados e fornecidos aos alunos pelo professor; podem ser fornecidos ao alunos e estes podem sugerir alterações; podem ser construídos individualmente ou em grupo pelos próprios alunos ou podem ainda ser construídos pelos alunos, seguindo as orientações do professor, que tem a possibilidade de adequar os jogos a sua realidade, ou seja, ao conteúdo visto em sua disciplina. Os jogos educativos computadorizados podem despertar no aluno a vontade de aprender. A possibilidade dos professores e dos alunos criarem seus pr6prios jogos torna a ferramenta ainda mais incentivadora, pois o professor pode trabalhar como orientador dos alunos enquanto estes constroem o seu conhecimento, ou seja, eles mesmos criarão os softwares que podem ser utilizados por seus colegas. Alem da proposta desta ferramenta implementou-se um protótipo, para validar o estudo proposto. Para definir o escopo do protótipo escolheu-se um tema que é abordado pela ferramenta: a educação para o transito. Atualmente as escolas estão implantando em seus currículos noções de educação para o transito, para que os futuros motoristas possuam uma maior consciência e educação para dirigir um automóvel. Aproveitando-se desta nova área no contexto escolar, o protótipo da ferramenta permite a criação de jogos educativos que enfocam, principalmente, as regras de transito. / This is the final research paper of a master's degree, which is the study of a multimedia authoring tool, dedicated to the creation of today's computer educational games. This tool shows the advantages of computer educational games as alternatives for the use of computer science in the school, besides facilitating that the teacher or the students elaborate about their own games, so as building their own knowledge. The use of an authoring tool for the creation of educational software can make the teachers work much easier propitiating the creation of their own software that will serve as support material for their classes. The use of multimedia brings countless advantages facilitating the teaching process to become richer and challenging motivating the students to study and to learn. Besides the study of the usage of multimedia authoring tools in the development of educational software, the present text also includes the study and definition of a tool that allows the users (teacher or students) to build games to be used in classrooms or out of the school atmosphere, reinforcing and aiding in the process of gaining knowledge. These games can be created by teachers and supplied to the students, the students can modify the supplied games, they can be built individually or in a group by the students with or without the teachers guidance, the instructor has the possibility to adapt the games to his own reality, regarding the contents of his subjects. Computer educational games can bring into the student the incoming will of learning. The possibility of teachers and students developing their own games turn the tool more interesting, because the teacher can work as the students advisor while they build their knowledge, that is to say, by themselves they will create the software that can be used by their colleagues. After the proposal of this tool, a prototype was implemented, to validate the proposed study. To define the prototype domain area it was chosen a theme that is aimed by the tool (traffic education). Now the schools are implanting in it's educational grade, traffic notions, so that the future drivers could have a larger, conscience and education to drive an automobile. Taking advantage of new areas in the school context, the prototype of the tool allows the creation of educational games focusing mainly on the rules of traffic.