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.

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.

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.

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.

This study aims to answer how Interactive Digital Narrative authoring tools shape the authoring process. Any tool or software shapes the way its users interact with it, oftentimes without the user even knowing it. It is therefore important to understand how these processes work when talking about authoring tools for IDNs, as they will inevitably shape its output. Three authoring tools were selected, those three being TextureWriter, Scrivener, and Twine. A standardized Game Design Document was created, and four participants were recruited to use those three authoring tools to adapt said Game Design Document. A focus group was conducted after the participants had used their tools for a fair amount of time to ascertain their authoring process experience. In the end, the participant using Twine did not attend the focus group, prohibiting evaluation of that tool. The results showed that there are a number of previously unknown ways in which the two evaluated authoring tools shape the game authoring process: Fundamental structure, temporal structure, spatial structure, presentation structure, mechanics of interaction, and multimedia inclusion. The results also showed a strong correlation between a master narrative and in how the authoring tool limited the author.

Widespread accessibility to the Internet and the proliferation of Web 2.0 technologies has led to the growth of online tools for educational content creation, delivery, and assessment. Maintaining high quality of assessment using this medium is made more practical by using tools to author and represent a broad range of assessment problems. A survey of existing problem-authoring tools uncovered two main deficiencies: (a) lack of support for authoring "dynamic" (parameterized) problems, and (b) lack of tools that are independent of a specific publishing format, persistence format, and/or authoring platform. Dynamic problems are assessment problem templates that support parameterization of the problems by the use of variables. Variables dynamically take values assigned at random to generate different instances of a problem from a template. This provides for greater diversity of authored problems, and permits students to practice with different variations of a problem. In existing problem authoring tools, the problem types supported are often limited to static problems. A formal definition of an assessment problem structure is presented. This formal definition served as a design aide for a new problem authoring system named QBank, a web-based tool that supports authoring dynamic problems. The proof-of-concept implementation of QBank supports export of questions in CSV format and the Khan Academy Exercise format. The extensible nature of the framework allows future development of features supporting export of authored problems into other publishing and/or persistence formats. / Master of Science

"Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs), while effective in enhancing students’ problem solving skills, are difficult and time-consuming to build. In order to reduce the length and the complexity of ITS construction, authoring tools are used. These tools provide a solid foundation for creating pedagogical exercises for students, and offer graphical user interfaces that eliminate the need for programming expertise. One of the major problems with today’s authoring tools is that they are still quite intricate and time-consuming to utilize, even for users who are familiar with them. Their steep learning curves often intimidate users who are only interested in creating simple tutoring systems. I have designed and implemented an authoring tool, called Mason, which strips away the visual interface design features of today’s top ITSs, and focuses on the creation of sophisticated pedagogical exercises using a hierarchical domain model. The exercise creation process includes the definition of numerous components, such as: a problem statement, the desired answer to the exercise, the strategies for tutoring students on the mistakes they make while trying to formulate the correct answer, and diagnostic rules for launching the appropriate strategies for specific student errors. The ultimate goal of Mason is to be able to significantly reduce the time needed to author text-based ITSs that are able to diagnose student answers and generate pedagogical dialogue accordingly. This goal was verified by using Mason to replicate the architecture of Ms. Lindquist, a sophisticated ITS for algebra that originally took over a year a construct. The replica was finished in less than a week, and was able to emulate Ms. Lindquist’s dialogue generation accurately with minor limitations."

This thesis deals about the use of authoring tools in physics, especially in creating physical models and simulations, and their contribution to different areas of teaching. The use of authoring tools is in the thesis closely discussed in connection with the teaching theories of constructivism and pedagogical content knowledge. The specific content of these theories and the reasons for their links to reference topics are listed in the theoretical part. Here is the survey of the current state of ICT tools with regard to their potential application in the teaching of physics. These are some examples of the selected authoring tools and examples of their use. In the experimental part of the thesis are first formulated research questions and the research hypotheses. That will be tested in the research. The research question was: "Has the use of authoring tools significant improvement in pupils' understanding and application of the curriculum?". The reason for this formulation and relevant hypothesis are described in the paper. Based on the research hypotheses was chosen research approach and used method - in this case pedagogical experiment. In the research were involved in various schools and teachers. The content of testing the effect of authoring tools were also different curriculum in physical education. Individual experiments and their results are described in separate chapters. In each description is a didactic analysis and justification of the selected used simulation maded by authoring tool. For each experiment, the values are given statistical probability of confirming/rejecting the hypothesis. In conclusion, the overall evaluation experiments and on this basis are recommended ways to implement authoring tools into teaching. There were described some other suggestions to use authoring tools, going beyond the experiment, based on the author's personal experience and teaching practice. It is recommended to dedicate neglected issue of authoring tools in teaching more attention in other pedagogical research.