The presentation of how the TERENCE FP7 EU project met its scientific and technological goals, and worked for its beneficiaries, e.g., schools, at the final review meeting of TERENCE

1. TERENCE !
its S&T goals and potential impact for beneficiaries
Rosella Gennari!
!
KRDB - CS Faculty - UniBZ!
!
http://www.terenceproject.eu

2. Outline
two stories from the DoW book
Chapter 1
What TERENCE has done for its
4 S&T goals
Chapter 2
What TERENCE has done for its
beneficiaries and its potential
impact
©
R.
Gennari,
LUB,
<gennari@inf.unibz.it>
TERENCE
3rd
review
meeting,
27th
Nov
2013,
l’Aquila

3. The TERENCE S&T1 goal
characteristation of learners
First of all, TERENCE will provide a refined
characterisation of poor comprehenders in
regard to the TERENCE stories and reasoning
games.
WP1:%user%
requirements
©
R.
Gennari,
LUB,
<gennari@inf.unibz.it>
WP7:%
evalua3on
TERENCE
3rd
review
meeting,
27th
Nov
2013,
l’Aquila

4. The TERENCE S&T1 goal
characteristation of learners
It will analyse the domain knowledge of (causal-)temporal
representation, reasoning and visualisation for and with
poor comprehenders.
User requirements will be essential
in producing (and classifying)
adequate stories and games, and in
structuring the conceptual model of
the ALS.
The requirements
will thus contribute
to shape the
guidance mechanism
of the TERENCE
ALS.
S&T1 will require a strong crossdisciplinary effort, starting from
the available domain knowledge,
and building on research results
from medicine, cognitive and
educational psychology.
©
R.
Gennari,
LUB,
<gennari@inf.unibz.it>
WP1:%user%
requirements
WP7:%
evalua3on
WP2:%story,%
game,%GUI%and%
ALS%design
WP6:%GUI%and%
ALS%design
TERENCE
3rd
review
meeting,
27th
Nov
2013,
l’Aquila

5. The TERENCE S&T2 goal
evaluation tasks and guidelines
TERENCE will design and assess novel evaluation tasks of text
comprehension
WP1:%user%
requirements
WP7:%
evalua3on
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the
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⧂The
policemen
fell
asleep
before
leaving
the
office
⧂The
policemen
fell
asleep
when
going
out
from
the
office
©
R.
Gennari,
LUB,
<gennari@inf.unibz.it>
TERENCE
3rd
review
meeting,
27th
Nov
2013,
l’Aquila

6. The TERENCE S&T2 goal
evaluation tasks and guidelines
and, in particular, novel metrics for the reasoning complexity of the
TERENCE games [and stories], that are common to UK and Italy.
The results of the evaluations will allow us to define novel evaluation
guidelines for those in charge of evaluating educational
comprehension tools for children.
WP1:%user%
requirements
metrics/indices
stories Coese
guidelines
WP7:%
evalua3on
WP2:%story,%
game,%GUI%and%
ALS%design
WP6:%GUI%and%
ALS%design
D2.2 TR
games generation algos D2.3
©
R.
Gennari,
LUB,
<gennari@inf.unibz.it>
TERENCE
3rd
review
meeting,
27th
Nov
2013,
l’Aquila

7. The TERENCE S&T3 goal
AI technologies and tools
TERENCE will also study scientific questions arising in automated
understanding of stories for novice comprehenders, in English and in
Italian.
In particular, TERENCE will study and contribute to automated
reasoning, possibly with explanatory feedback, that is adequate to
poor comprehenders and their educators.
WP1:%user%
requirements
relation
type
if with signal...
WP7:%
evalua3on
else if deduced...
WP3:%story%
annota3on
WP2:%game%
design%I
WP4:%game%
design%II,%txt%game%
genera3on
WP4:%game%genera3on%process%design
©
R.
Gennari,
LUB,
<gennari@inf.unibz.it>
TERENCE
3rd
review
meeting,
27th
Nov
2013,
l’Aquila

8. The TERENCE S&T3 goal
AI technologies and tools
Estimates of construction time indicate that the development of an effective ALS can be costly and time consuming.
The automation of TERENCE (via automated annotations and
automated reasoning) will help reduce the development costs, and
allow researchers to concentrate on the design of the higher-level ITS
models.
As for the automation itself, TERENCE aims at improving on:
T1. novel natural language technologies and tools for story
annotation, in English and Italian,
T2. temporal automated reasoning tools that can interact with
the annotations of stories developed with the annotation tools,
T3. reasoning tasks and tools, so as to enhance temporal and
causal-temporal knowledge, acquisition and automation of
inference skills on texts.
WP3:(story(
annota7on
WP4:(txt(game(
genera7on
WP5:(
illustra7on(of(
visuals
WP6:(
composi7on(of(
txt(and(visuals
learning(material(semi,automated(development
©
R.
Gennari,
LUB,
<gennari@inf.unibz.it>
TERENCE
3rd
review
meeting,
27th
Nov
2013,
l’Aquila

9. The TERENCE S&T4 goal
modular and reusable architecture
The difficulty in sharing components among different designers has also impeded
the smooth design and development of ALSs. It is often the case that ALSs are
written in many different programming languages that are incompatible. Frequently,
implementers intertwine the components into one monolithic system.
Modelling the ALS conceptual models
(adaptation, domain, environment,
student) with ontologies, and developing
the components of the adaptation engine
as web services will ensure the highest
level of interoperability and reusability.
Educators will be able to adapt and reuse stories,
illustrations and smart games produced by others, which
will promote collaborative learning. More in general, the
TERENCE web services can be reused within other
collaborative web-based environments. The semantic web
service architecture of TERENCE will also contribute to
reducing development costs. In brief, TERENCE will
contribute to the general
a dva n c e m e n t o f A L S
architectures on account
of: its modularity and the
reusability of its modules,
developed as semantic
web services.
©
R.
Gennari,
LUB,
<gennari@inf.unibz.it>
GUI Layer
Educator
Expert
ALS Layer
Reasoning
Reasoner
Module
User
Manager
OpenRDF
Expert GUI
Adaptive
Engine
Story
Manager
OpenRDF
Learner GUI
Annotation
NPL
Module
Game
Manager
OpenRDF
Learner
Visualisation
Visualisation
Module
illustrations
Visualisation
Manager
OpenRDF
WP6:%ALS%
development
WP2:%ALS%
design
WP3:%story%
annota:on
Persistence Layer
WP4:%txt%game%
genera:on
WP6:%
visualisa:on
TERENCE
3rd
review
meeting,
27th
Nov
2013,
l’Aquila

10. Outline
two stories from the DoW book
Chapter 1
What TERENCE has done for its
4 S&T goals
Chapter
2
What
TERENCE
has
done
for
its
bene6iciaries
and
its
potential
impact
©
R.
Gennari,
LUB,
<gennari@inf.unibz.it>
TERENCE
3rd
review
meeting,
27th
Nov
2013,
l’Aquila

11. For learners
what we did in words
Keywords: improved reading; appetite for reading
he usage of the TERENCE adaptive learning system (ALS), with adequate learning material and
GUI, calibrated by an intervention plan designed by experts,
improved reading comprehension
The TERENCE intervention may have also stimulated its learners' organic functioning and global
cognition (e.g., visual memory, global-deductive reasoning, attention). Consequently, the longer-term
impact of TERENCE may be by far larger: a potential increase in the communicative and relational
competencies of its learners for communicating with peers and adults (parents and others), as well as
in their self-esteem.
For instance, at the conclusion of the intervention in
schools, a number of children asked to continue
reading the TERENCE books at home, because they
wanted to finish their stories.
No better result could be hoped for the end of a project that, in its infancy, wished to nurture a desire
for reading.
©
R.
Gennari,
LUB,
<gennari@inf.unibz.it>
TERENCE
3rd
review
meeting,
27th
Nov
2013,
l’Aquila

12. For learners
what we did in pics
©
R.
Gennari,
LUB,
<gennari@inf.unibz.it>
TERENCE
3rd
review
meeting,
27th
Nov
2013,
l’Aquila

13. For educators and parents
what we did in words
Keywords: novel teaching; off-the-shelf open learning material;
guidelines and tools for creating adequate material
Our findings also suggest the possibility of strengthening the paper- and-pencil didactic activities with the adoption of
technological supports, both in an individual setting and in a social context (e.g., in the classroom). In view of that, The
TERENCE ALS with its learning material and learner GUI promises to improve the quality of work of educators and families
by integrating classical teaching activities with novel learning
experiences and methodologies
that are flexible, since they are based on adequate stories and games that are provided in an adaptive fashion, and effective, since
TERENCE improved reading comprehension.
Moreover, the use of the TERENCE authoring tool and guidelines,
in particular for stories and games, obviates the need for
educators to find adequate learning material, render texts
adequate to poor comprehenders or deaf children, or even to
manually create complex games [...] and track the progression of
learners
Thus, for educators, TERENCE is a time saving and cost saving tool, facilitating the adaptation of the material to learners and
enabling its creation, as well as the automated generation of games out of any text.
©
R.
Gennari,
LUB,
<gennari@inf.unibz.it>
TERENCE
3rd
review
meeting,
27th
Nov
2013,
l’Aquila

14. For education and psychology actors
what we did in words
Keywords: remediation; large-scale comparative analysis;
evaluation tasks
Potentially, TERENCE entire ALS, learning material and guidelines or authoring tool might be also used in
remediation settings
where clinical psychologists may control in a non-intrusive manner (e.g., crucial for autism) the effectiveness of the
remediation, and the stimulation can be also delivered at home (in a more familiar environment) for longer periods (in
addition to the clinical activities).
Moreover, TERENCE did the first a large scale comparative
analysis of the linguistic and cognitive profiles of hearing and
deaf poor readers, in UK and Italy.
It significantly improves our current understanding of the specific factors causing reading comprehension problems in the
two groups of learners.
New evaluation tasks for the assessment of children's
understanding of causal and temporal linguistic relations
were designed and tested in two languages by large scale
studies.
©
R.
Gennari,
LUB,
<gennari@inf.unibz.it>
TERENCE
3rd
review
meeting,
27th
Nov
2013,
l’Aquila

15. For education actors
what we did in pics
©
R.
Gennari,
LUB,
<gennari@inf.unibz.it>
TERENCE
3rd
review
meeting,
27th
Nov
2013,
l’Aquila

16. For researchers and technologists
what we did in words
Keywords: networking; scientific events; commercial
exploitation
As a natural consequence of evaluation results and awareness arousal, TERENCE ideas concept and vision have
already been
taken up by related initiatives in Europe or senior colleagues.
Examples are: the Linked Open Data (LOD) European project, in which the TERENCE learning material was
published as open data, and where the annotation and reasoning modules were advertised; the MUSE European
project that took up the TERENCE annotation language, methodologies and findings for NLP; the DARE research
project (http://www.inf.unibz.it/dare), financed by the Province of Bozen-Bolzano, that took up TERENCE stories and
game framework for co-designing games with primary-school classes. Others are reported in the TERENCE
dissemination and exploitation reports.
Moreover, the TERENCE Consortium was also active in
promoting TERENCE findings in research venues
whether by organising events such as the evidence-based and user-centred TEL workshop series, counting already 3
successful issues, or by participating in key TEL conferences such as ICALT.
©
R.
Gennari,
LUB,
<gennari@inf.unibz.it>
TERENCE
3rd
review
meeting,
27th
Nov
2013,
l’Aquila

17. For researchers and technologists
what we did in pics
©
R.
Gennari,
LUB,
<gennari@inf.unibz.it>
TERENCE
3rd
review
meeting,
27th
Nov
2013,
l’Aquila

18. For policy makers
what we did in short
Keywords: awareness rising; networking with
school stakeholders
Last but not least, TERENCE researchers
got in touch with several policy-makers in
particular in the education sector.
Meetings were organised, for instance, in L'Aquila Province and with the Education Body of the
Province of Bozen-Bolzano
for raising awareness of the problem of text
comprehension that, in particular in Italy, is not
recognised
as a special development disease.Besides raising awareness of the problem, such meetings
allowed consortium members to disseminate the TERENCE results and explain the novelty and
potentiality of the approach of TERENCE for schools, mixing technology with traditional
interventions, and visuo-perceptual skills for reasoning about stories for nowadays learners.
Support letters and agreements were signed for using
TERENCE in traditional schools, some of which
received ICT facilities for TERENCE.
©
R.
Gennari,
LUB,
<gennari@inf.unibz.it>
TERENCE
3rd
review
meeting,
27th
Nov
2013,
l’Aquila

19. End of stories from the DoW book
S&T1
ucd+ebd
WP1: learner
requirements
WP7:
evaluations
WP2: AE rules and
ALS design
Impact
WP6: ALS
development
UniPD+UnivAQ
LUH
characterisation
UnivAQ
5 beneficiaries
USAL
S&T2
guidelines
S&T4
S&T3
modular !
& reusable
AI for generation
ucd+ebd
ucd+ebd
WP6: ALS
development
WP2: ALS design
WP1: learner
requirements
UniPD+UnivAQ
WP7:
evaluations
WP1: learner
requirements
WP7:
evaluations
UniPD+UnivAQ
LUH
USAL
UnivAQ
UnivAQ
WP2: story and
game design
WP3:
annotation
KUL
WP4:
generation
LUB
WP5:
illustration
MOME
WP6:
visualisation
LUB
learning material semi-automated development
WP3:
annotation
KUL
WP4:
generation
LUB
WP6:
visualisation
LUB
learning material semi-automated development
LUH
©
R.
Gennari,
LUB,
<gennari@inf.unibz.it>
TERENCE
3rd
review
meeting,
27th
Nov
2013,
l’Aquila

20. with
TERENCE books for
X-mas time
The End
K1
E BOO
ENC
E TER
TH
and forgetting others (sorry, Pablo!)
for remembering
its best stories
THE T
EREN
CE BO
OK 2