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Call for Papers - International Workshop on
Personalization Approaches in Learning Environments (PALE)
http://adenu.ia.uned.es/workshops/pale2011/

July 2011, Girona, Spain
in conjunction with UMAP 2011 (http://www.umap2011.org/)
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The benefits of the personalization and adaptation of computer applications have been widely
reported both in e-learning, i.e. the use of electronic media to teach or assess, or otherwise
support learning;, and b-learning, i.e. to combine traditional face-to-face instruction with
electronic media (blended learning).

The International Workshop on Personalization Approaches in Learning Environments
(PALE) is the result of merging the experience and background of three workshops focused
on applying user modelling, personalization and adaptation in learning environments (see
workshop history for details). Each of them focused on very specific topics, as follows:

- APLEC: Adaptation and Personalization in E-B/Learning using Pedagogic Conversational Agents
- ROLE: Personalizing Responsive Open Learning Environments
- TUMAS-A: Towards User Modeling and Adaptive Systems for All

Following the experience in previous editions of these workshops, PALE will follow the
Learning Cafe methodology to promote discussions on some of the open issues regarding
personalisation in learning environments. A Learning Cafe session will be run by each of the
original workshops. In particular, the following three Learning Cafe sessions have been
organised:

- Learning Cafe 1 (LC1): focused on the APLEC open issues in interactive learning
environments that build the knowledge with the student through a set of interactions,
such as in natural language by using animated Pedagogic Conversational Agents
(PCAs).

- Learning Cafe 2 (LC2): focused on the ROLE open issues in responsive open learning
environments that permits personalization of the entire learning environment and its
functionalities, i.e. individualization of its components and their adjustment or
replacement by alternative solutions.

- Learning Cafe 3 (LC3): focused on the TUMAS-A open issues in inclusive learning
environments to provide a personalized, accessible and ubiquitous support for their
users (learners, facilitators, professors) using the appropriate technologies and
standards as well as the evaluation procedures that can measure the impact of the
personalized and inclusive support for all, but considering their individual and
evolving needs, in their particular context.

The submission procedure (see below) will be common for the three Learning Cafes, but
authors should indicate the Learning Cafe where they consider that their submission fits
best.

Each Learning Cafe will last 2 hours and will consist in brief presentations of the key
questions posed and small group discussions with participants randomly grouped in three
tables. Each table will be moderated by one of the organisers. Following the methodology,
participants will change tables during the discussion with the aim to share ideas among the
groups.


TOPICS
======
The topics of interest of this workshop include but are not limited to the following:
- Motivation, benefits, and issues of personalization of learning environments
- Approaches for the personalization of inclusive learning environments
- Approaches for the personalization of responsive learning environments
- Approaches for the personalization of interactive learning environments
- Techniques and Methods
- Results and Metrics
- Social and Educational Issues
- Use of Pedagogic Conversational Agents
- Affective Computing


KEY QUESTIONS
=============
The higher-level research question to be addressed in the workshop is the following: Which
approaches can be followed to personalize learning environments?
Nevertheless, each Learning Cafe is focused on specific research questions, as follows.

Learning Cafe 1 - APLEC:
Organizers: Diana Perez-Marin, Susan Bull and Noboru Matsuda
- Which pedagogic agents are currently taking into account information of the learner
model to guide the dialogue?
- What does an effective conversation between the student and the agent look like?
- How could a learner model be used to adapt the pedagogical agent to the student to
provide adaptive emotional support?
- How should the effect of such an adaptation be measured?
- How could the affect of a pedagogical agent improve a student's motivation?

Learning Cafe 2 - ROLE:
Organizers: Milos Kravcik, Alexander Nussbaumer and Effie Law
- How can a whole learning environment or its components be personalized to the needs of
learners?
- What can be personalized and for which purposes?
- Which models and techniques can be used for personalization?
- How to adjust the user control of personalization and adaptation to his or her needs?
- How can adaptive support and guidance for personalization be provided?
- Which monitoring or tracking methods can be used to automatically create learner profiles?

Learning Cafe 3 - TUMAS-A:
Organizers: Olga C. Santos and Jesus G. Boticario
- Which scenarios for personalized inclusive e-learning (PIL) systems can be identified?
- What user features are required to support PIL scenarios?
- Which computational methods in PIL exist?
- What evaluation approaches can be used in PIL scenarios?
- Which developing methodologies are to be used in PIL?
- How current standards can be used/adapted/extended to cope with PIL?
- Which multi-modal and context-based interaction issues impinge on PIL?
- What are the most appropriate support and guidance approaches to provide adaptation in PIL?


SUBMISSION FORMAT AND REVIEW PROCESS
====================================
Papers must be prepared in 4-page LNCS format and be submitted through EasyChair
(http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=pale2011) in .pdf format. All papers will be
double-blind peer-reviewed by at least two reviewers with expertise in the area.
Accepted papers will be included in the workshop proceedings published on-line by CEUR
Workshop Proceedings (ISSN 1613-0073) and at the workshop webpage.

Contact info: pale2011 AT easychair.org


DEADLINES
=========
April 15, 2011: Submission of papers
May 13, 2011: Notification of acceptance
June 31, 2011: Camera-ready paper
July 11/15, 2011: PALE workshop (final date to be communicated by UMAP chairs)


COMMITTEES
==========

Organizing Committee
--------------------
Jesus G. Boticario, Spanish National University for Distance Education (UNED), Spain
Susan Bull, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom
Milos Kravcik, RWTH University Aachen, Germany
Effie Law, University of Leicester, United Kingdom
Noboru Matsuda, Carnegie Mellon University, USA
Alexander Nussbaumer, Graz University of Technology, Austria
Diana Perez-Marin,Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain
Olga C. Santos, Spanish National University for Distance Education (UNED), Spain

Program Committee
-----------------
APLEC:
Gautam Biswas, Vanderbilt University. U.S.A.
Zoraida Callejas, Universidad de Granada, Spain
Federica Cena, University of Torino. Italy
David Griol, Universidad Carlos III, Madrid, Spain
Ramon Lopez-Cozar, Universidad de Granada, Spain
Jose Antonio Macias, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid. Spain
Liliana Santacruz, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos. Spain
Dimitris Spiliotopoulos, University of Athens. Greece
Kate Taylor, Sanger Institute. U.K.
George Veletsianos, University of Texas. U.S.A.

ROLE:
Daniel Dahrendorf, IMC, Germany
Martin Ebner, Graz University of Technology, Austria
Ralf Klamma, RWTH Aachen University, Germany
Sylvana Kroop, Centre for Social Innovation, Austria
Alexander Mikroyannidis, The Open University, UK
Felix Moedritscher, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria
Ana Paiva, INESC-ID, Portugal
Peter Reimann, University of Sydney, Australia
Carsten Ullrich, Shanghai University, China
Martin Wolpers, Fraunhofer FIT, Germany

TUMAS-A:
Silvia Baldiris, Universitat de Girona, Spain
Rafael Calvo, University of Sydney, Australia
Rosa Carro, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Spain
Ramon Fabregat, Universitat de Girona, Spain
Sabine Graf, Athabascau University, Canada
Emmanuelle Gutierrez y Restrepo, SIDAR Foundation, Spain
Judy Kay, University of Sydney, Australia
Kinshuk, Athabascau University, Canada
Alfred Kobsa, University of California, USA
Loic Martinez, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, Spain
Alexandros Paramythis, Johannes Kepler University, Austria
Jutta Treviranus, OCAD University, Canada


WORKSHOP HISTORY
================
The first APLEC was held last year in conjunction with the International Conference on User
Modelling, Adaptation and Personalization. APLEC2010 focused on new techniques to model
learners using the Pedagogic Conversational Agent (PCA) technologies.

The ROLE workshop is born in the project of the same name and has already organized a
successful workshop at the PLE 2010 Conference. It aims to empower the learner to take
control over his or her own learning processes. It develops an infrastructure that enables
learners to construct their own learning environments according to their personal and
contextual needs such as accreditation and corporate goals. The challenge is to implement and
test a user-driven framework based on Web 2.0 technologies. ROLE fosters the idea that most
learning takes place informally, in different contexts and scenarios, and that content is not
provided by one single provider.

TUMAS-A is a series of workshops being organized in conjunction with relevant conferences
from different but related fields. The 1st TUMAS-A workshop was organized in 2007 in the
User Modeling conference. Relevant feedback was obtained regarding how users and their
interactions should be modeled. The 2nd TUMAS-A workshop was held in the WI/IAT 2008
conference and put the focus on the intelligent technology that could be used to support that
modeling. The 3rd TUMAS-A workshop took place in the AIED 2009 conference and
provided new insights on knowledge representation for learning systems that care for any type
of user, including their interaction and accessibility needs. In the last edition, the TUMASA
workshop was embedded in the RecSysTEL workshop at ACM RecSys 2010 conference and
focused on how recommender systems can be used in e-learning environments to support
learners and educators in their learning and teaching tasks.