ANNUAL NSF GRANT PROGRESS REPORT
NSF Program: Interactive Systems
NSF Award Number: 970167
PI Name: Susan W. McRoy
Period Covered By This Report: 6/1/97 - 5/31/98
PI Organization: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Date: 5/1/98
PI Address: Computer Science
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
P.O. Box 784
Milwaukee, WI 53201
XX Check if Continued Funding is Requested
Please include the following information:
1. Brief summary of progress, including results obtained to date, and their relationship to the general goals of the grant;
The general goal of this project is to investigate models of dialogue that can support robust and flexible interaction between people and computer systems. The research aims to specify a computational theory and methods to allow systems to vary the presentation of material dynamically. Specifically, this project will provide a specification and representation of the linguistic, intentional, and social information that influence people's understanding of an ongoing dialog and that allow for the detection of misunderstanding, if it should arise. It will also provide methods for integrating and employing these information sources to produce relevant utterances and to identify and resolve communication problems as they arise. Evaluation of the approach will employ intelligent tutoring systems that are under development. In the past year, the PI has been working on specifying the knowledge sources for achieving robust understanding and their representation in a computational framework.
To investigate these models, the PI has been applying them to the natural language processing and knowledge representation components of a collaborative system that allows medical students to practice their decision-making skills by considering a number of medical cases that differ from each other in a controlled manner. The natural language component is composed of a generalized augmented transition network parser/grammar and a discourse analyzer for managing the natural language interactions. (The coverage of the grammar is now quite broad, comparable to Winograd 83). All knowledge is represented using a propositional semantic network formalism, thereby providing a uniform representation to all components of the model. This knowledge includes information about the content and structure of the interaction, as well as domain and task-level information. This uniform representation allows distinct tasks, such as dialog management, domain-specific reasoning, and meta-reasoning about external knowledge-based systems, to all use the same information source.
McRoy, S. W., Ali, S. S., and Haller, S., "Mixed Depth Representations for Dialog Processing", To appear in the Proceedings of the 20th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci98), Madison, WI, August 1998.
McRoy, S. W., Haller, Susan M. and Ali, Syed S, "Mixed Depth Representations in the B2 System'', To appear in the Working Notes, 1998 AAAI Workshop on Representations for Multimodal Human-Computer Interaction, Madison, Wisconsin, July 1998.
Ali, Syed, and S. W. McRoy, "Efficient Representations for Multi-Modal Interaction, To appear in the Working Notes, 1998 AAAI Workshop on Representations for Multimodal Human-Computer Interaction}, to be held July 26-27, 1998, Madison, Wisconsin.
McRoy, S. W., A. Liu-Perez, and S. Ali, "Computerized Interactive Health Care Education". To appear July, 1998 in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.
McRoy, S. W., "Achieving Robust Human-Computer Communication", To appear in the International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, Academic Press, 48, 1998.
McRoy, S. W., S. Haller, and S. Ali, "Uniform Knowledge Representation for Language Processing", Journal of Natural Language Engineering, 3(3), 1997. Cambridge University Press.
Scientific Board, The International Journal of Human-Computer Studies special issue on Collaboration, Cooperation and Conflict in Dialogue Systems.
Guest Co-Editor, User-Modelling and User-Adapted Interaction, Special Issue on Mixed-Initiative Interaction. To appear Spring 1998.
Guest Editor, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies/Knowledge Acquisition, Special Issue on Detecting, Repairing, and Preventing Human-Machine Miscommunication. To appear Spring 1998.
2. A brief summary of work to be performed during the next year of support if changed from the original proposal; an indication of any current problems or favorable or unusual developments; and any other significant information pertinent to the type of project supported by NSF or as specified by the terms and conditions of the grant;
There are no changes from the original proposal, nor any unusual developments.
3. Statement of funds estimated to remain unobligated -if more than 20%- at the end of the period for which NSF currently is providing support;
4. Proposed budget for the ensuing year in the NSF format, only if the original award letter did not indicate specific incremental amounts or if adjustments to a planned increment exceeding the greater of 10% or $10,000 are being requested;
No excess increment is being requested.
5. Information about other current and pending research support of senior personnel, if changed from the previous submission;
The following research proposals are now pending (or are expected to be in the near future) at NSF:
"Intelligent Tutoring System for Visual Reasoning", Division of
Engineering Education and Centers. Yong Se Kim, PI. (Other Co-PI:
Kevin Forseth and Frederick Jules).
Planned duration 9/1/98 - 8/31/02. McRoy's commitment would be
1.1 academic month (budgeted as 1 course/acad yr release time).
"Collaborative Systems for Learning and Education", KDI-LIS, Susan McRoy
PI.
(with Syed Ali, Michael Darnell, Sandra Millon-Underwood, and John
Surber).
Planned duration 1/1/99-12/31/02. McRoy's commitment would be
1.1 academic month (budgeted as 1 course/acad yr release time.)
"Multimodal Explanation of Probabilistic Data", KDI-KN, Susan McRoy,
PI (with
Syed Ali, Ethan Munson, and Scott Solberg)
Planned duration 1/1/99-12/31/02. McRoy's commitment would be
1.1 academic month (budgeted as 1 course/acad yr release time.)
6. A statement describing any contribution of the project to the area of education and human-resource development, if changed from any previous submission; and
In addition to the support of graduate students anticipated in the proposal, during the summer of 1997, McRoy was a mentor to two undergraduate women as part of the Computing Research Association's Distributed Mentor Project. The participants' projects were both related to the work funded by this grant, giving them the chance to participate in an active research project and to participate in the PI's weekly research group meetings. (This was in addition her daily meetings with the mentorees.)
The Computing Research Association's Distributed Mentor Project brings together for a summer of research undergraduate females in computer science and computer engineering (CS&E) and female professors at research institutions. The intent of the mentor program, which is funded by the National Science foundation, is to increase the number of women entering graduate school in CS&E. Because of the limited number of female researchers in CS&E who can serve as role models and mentors, undergraduates are brought directly to the professors' institutions.
7. Updated information on animal care and use, Institutional Biohazard Committee and Human Subject Certification, if changed substantially from those originally proposed and approved.
I certify that to the best of my knowledge (1) the statements herein (excluding scientific hypotheses and scientific opinions) are true and complete, and (2) the text and graphics in this report as well as any accompanying publications or other documents, unless otherwise indicated, are the original work of the signatories or individuals working under their supervision. I understand that the willful provision of false information or concealing a material fact in this report or any other communication submitted to NSF is a criminal offense (U.S. Code, Title 18, Section 1001.)
PI Signature:_____________________________________________
NSF Form 1328 (7/95)