Unstructured Conversations Research Articles

Experiencing online training and educational inequality in TVET delivery among trainers and trainees in Kenya during the COVID-19 pandemic: A case study

AbstractDuring the COVID-19 pandemic, the switch to online training exposed the digital divide between higher education institutions, with some significantly superior to others in terms of equipment and experience, as well as among students enrolled in the same institution. The purpose of this study was to investigate online training and educational inequality in TVET (Technical and Vocational Education and Training) delivery in Kenya, during the COVID-19. A total of 16 unstructured discussions were conducted in four TVET institutions in the Western Kenya Region. Each college organized four conversations (two males only and two females only groups). The study took into account various reports and literature to provide the background and analyze the data to respond to the research questions. Additionally, the study collected data through desk reviews, unstructured conversations, reports, emails, WhatsApp messages, and phone calls that aid in situation analysis, utilizing a qualitative research methodology of situational analysis. Lack of experience with online training by trainers and trainees, along with inadequate training assistance, resulted in feelings of anxiety and unease. Trainees were frequently incapable of self-regulation and remained motivated to learn at home and they were unsure about the quality of the materials accessible to them. Recommendations on four major issues are given: providing complete support to trainees, trainers, and other institution personnel; improving remote and online training; ensuring policy certainty, implementation, and monitoring; and discovering and implementing effective interventions and innovations.

From unimodal to multimodal dynamics of verbal and nonverbal cues during unstructured conversation.

Conversations encompass continuous exchanges of verbal and nonverbal information. Previous research has demonstrated that gestures dynamically entrain each other and that speakers tend to align their vocal properties. While gesture and speech are known to synchronize at the intrapersonal level, few studies have investigated the multimodal dynamics of gesture/speech between individuals. The present study aims to extend our comprehension of unimodal dynamics of speech and gesture to multimodal speech/gesture dynamics. We used an online dataset of 14 dyads engaged in unstructured conversation. Speech and gesture synchronization was measured with cross-wavelets at different timescales. Results supported previous research on intrapersonal speech/gesture coordination, finding synchronization at all timescales of the conversation. Extending the literature, we also found interpersonal synchronization between speech and gesture. Given that the unimodal and multimodal synchronization occurred at similar timescales, we suggest that synchronization likely depends on the vocal channel, particularly on the turn-taking dynamics of the conversation.

Land cover analysis of two university campuses: Examination over satellite images by Chat GPT

Land Use and Land Cover Analysis are important in detecting the changes in urban areas, rural areas, and focused lands like university campuses. The availability of high-quality satellite images from diverse time sequences makes evaluations for changes by time possible. The analysis methods include insights from remote sensing fields to Artificial intelligence (AI) tools. AI has been significantly developed in the last decades in various fields, and applications of AI on satellite imagery analysis are being influenced. This study explores the capability of Chat GPT, which is one of the leading Language Models and can generate prompts and analysis due to inputs for Land Cover and Use Analysis. Firstly, an unstructured conversation with Chat GPT was held, and then, considering this experience, a land cover change analysis was executed for two university campuses. Besides, the analysis was also re-executed in Colab with codes generated by Chat GPT to seek differences. Two university campuses, Erzurumm Technical University and Adıyaman University, founded in the last two decades, were utilized as case studies. Chat GPT explained the steps and procedure of the analysis in detail generated codes in a defined framework. The analysis results have problems in classifying the land cover; however, the imperviousness change analysis shows most of the construction improvement. The experiment and findings have important implications for future research in Land Cover analysis implementing AI tools.

The medium is the message: toxicity declines in structured vs unstructured online deliberations

Humanity needs to deliberate effectively at scale about highly complex and contentious problems. Current online deliberation tools—such as email, chatrooms, and forums—are however plagued by levels of discussion toxicity that deeply undercut the willingness and ability of the participants to engage in thoughtful, meaningful, deliberations. This has led many organizations to either shut down their forums or invest in expensive, frequently unreliable, and ethically fraught moderation of people's contributions in their forums. This paper includes a comprehensive review on online toxicity, and describes how a structured deliberation process can substantially reduce toxicity compared to current approaches. The key underlying insight is that unstructured conversations create, especially at scale, an “attention wars” dynamic wherein people are often incented to resort to extremified language in order to get visibility for their postings. A structured deliberation process wherein people collaboratively create a compact organized collection of answers and arguments removes this underlying incentive, and results, in our evaluation, in a 50% reduction of high-toxicity posts.

Assessment of Adverse Childhood Experiences and Social Determinants of Health: A Survey of Practices in Pediatric Weight Management Programs.

Introduction: Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and social determinants of health (SDoH) are associated with increased incidence of pediatric obesity. Recent literature highlights an imperative need to assess ACEs and SDoH among youth and families with obesity to identify those individuals requiring targeted interventions. The primary objective of the present study was to examine the frequency, methodology, and barriers in evaluation of ACEs and SDoH within pediatric weight management programs (PWMPs). Methods: Invitations were e-mailed to a comprehensive directory of 92 PWMPs in the United States with a link to complete an electronic survey. Results: Forty-one PWMPs from 26 states completed the survey. Assessment of one or more ACEs and SDoH was common and typically took place during the initial patient visit by the psychologist or medical practitioner through unstructured conversations. Reported barriers to assessment included lack of time to assess and to follow-up, lack of clinic protocols, and inadequate referral resources. Programs offering bariatric surgery and those with embedded mental health clinicians reported fewer barriers to ACEs/SDoH referral resources, while family-based and healthy lifestyle-focused programs perceived more barriers related to insufficient support staff and time to follow-up with families. Conclusions: Most PWMPs assess a subset of ACEs and SDoH; however, approaches to assessment vary, are often unstructured, and several barriers remain to optimizing assessment and follow-up. Future research should evaluate standardized ACEs/SDoH assessment protocols, ideal workflow, and their impact on obesity treatment and related health outcomes.

Early Childhood Education Learning Management in Improving Children’s Language Skills with Storytelling Method

This research aims to describe the management of early childhood learning by using a storytelling method in improving language at Dharma Wanita Siwalan Kindergarten. The steps of this research are as follows, (1) learning planning, (2) organizing learning, (3) implementing learning, and (4) assessing learning. The descriptive qualitative approach was used as the method of this research, the type of this research is a case study design at Dharma Wanita Siwalan Kindergarten. The researcher chose the management of early childhood learning by using the storytelling method in improving language skills as the object of this research. Furthermore, the researcher conducted interview, observation, and documentation as research methods. The data analysis technique used in this research is the data collection model, data reduction, data presentation, and conclusion drawing. The processes of data collection and analysis carried out by the researchers are as follows: (1) Making a semester activity plan (RKS). The next process is the preparation of RKM using the RKH format. After that, researcher prepared teaching activities. (2) Organizing activities carried out by the school principal. Then, in improving language skills, on the storytelling method, the teacher allocated it to language lessons, (3) The implementation of learning with the storytelling method was carried out in the form of fairy tales, stories of Prophets, and spontaneous stories. It is intended for children to be able to see and remember the incident. (4) Assessment on performance, observation, structured and unstructured conversations, and using a liaison book. Early Childhood Education (ECE) is one of the platforms used to develop and add professionalism to Early Childhood Education (ECE) managers. The expansion and acceleration of Early Childhood Education (ECE) services is one of the strategic policies established by the Ministry of National Education. As a result of this policy, the addition and capacity of Early Childhood Education education is a demand that cannot be ignored. Physically, children experience extraordinary development, starting from the growth of brain cells and other organs. One of them happened at Dharma Wanita Siwalan Kindergarten, where students’ language skills were improved through the storytelling method at school. The expansion and acceleration of Early Childhood Education (ECE) services is one of the strategic policies created by the Ministry of National Education.

Unravelling the relation between altruistic cooperativeness trait, smiles, and cooperation: a mediation analysis.

Human cooperativeness is an important personality trait. However, the mechanism through which people cooperate remains unclear. Previous research suggests that one of the proposed functions of smiling is to advertise altruistic dispositions, leading to successful cooperation. In particular, studies have reported that Duchenne smiles are honest signals of cooperative intent because they are not easy to produce voluntarily. This study aimed to examine the predictive relationships among altruistic cooperativeness traits, Duchenne smiles, and cooperative behavior. A total of 90 people were randomly assigned to dyads and filmed while they participated in a ten-minute, unstructured conversation followed by a prisoner's dilemma game to measure their cooperative behaviors. Their smiles during conversations were classified as Duchenne or non-Duchenne. Participants' altruistic dispositions were measured before the conversation began using an anonymous prisoner's dilemma game. The results of our linear regression analyses support previous findings that individual's Duchenne smiles and their own cooperative behavior are positively correlated. However, when we controlled for altruistic cooperativeness, Duchenne smiles no longer correlated with cooperative behavior. The results of the mediation analyses showed that Duchenne smiles and smile synchrony did not mediate the predictive relationship between altruistic cooperativeness and cooperative behavior. Our results suggest that human cooperative behavior may be predetermined by altruistic cooperativeness. This calls for the reconsideration of the Duchenne smile as an underlying behavioral mechanism that is effective for signaling altruistic cooperative intent.

Analyzing Language in the Picnic Scene Picture and in Conversation: The Type of Discourse Sample We Choose Influences Findings in People With Aphasia.

People with aphasia express that improved conversational discourse is a primary rehabilitation goal. Discourse is usually assessed using monologue, such as a picture description task, but research shows that language in monologue varies from language in everyday conversation. Consequently, we investigated the relationship of language in unstructured conversation and in the picnic scene picture because it is a part of the most often used aphasia battery (Western Aphasia Battery-Revised) and thus is frequently used to inform therapy. Second, because previous research suggests people with severe aphasia may not demonstrate language production variability between types of monologue-level discourse, we evaluated the relationship of severity and the difference in scores between conversation and the picnic scene task. Thirty-four people with mild-to-severe aphasia described the picnic scene and provided a conversation sample. We measured language production and communicative success using seven measures with established psychometrics in conversation/monologue. We conducted correlations to answer the research questions. Correlations were moderate and weaker for the measures in the two conditions. A strong negative relationship was demonstrated between aphasia severity and global coherence. All other relationships were moderate and weaker for the remaining measures when correlated with aphasia severity (also negative). Results are consistent with other studies indicating that language varies in different types of discourse. We conclude that for accurate, meaningful assessment, discourse sampling needs to include the specific type of discourse the individual wishes to address in therapy, because discourse samples and their findings are not interchangeable.

Designing a Leveled Conversational Teachable Agent for English Language Learners

Given the considerable importance of the English language as a common method of global communication, supporting and engaging learning environments for studying English as a second language are essential. In this study, we propose an interactive agent that considers differences in learners’ skill levels to help motivate learners and support independent study. The proposed agent is an AI chatbot that can vary the complexity of its natural language interactions as learners’ skills improve and engage in unstructured conversations with users. We first collected a dataset of English conversations among children and then acquired data on learners’ utterances of words and sentences using an interactive interface for skill evaluation. Based on these datasets, we generated a set of personalized conversational agents by using algorithms to evaluate speakers’ pronunciation and sentences. Finally, an expert in English language learning evaluated the interactive system to ensure that it could support learners with different levels of proficiency and that the application may be expected to help motivate students to learn. The results showed that the interactive teachable agent could help motivate students who may not otherwise be interested in learning by using a more personalized approach tailored to their skill level.

No connectivity, better connections: teenagers’ experiences of a phone-free summer camp in the United States

ABSTRACT Phones have become pervasive in many teenagers’ lives, and outdoor educators are increasingly faced with making decisions regarding technology. This case study sheds light on the complex relationship between teenagers, phones and residential outdoor environmental education by exploring the experiences of participants at a phone-free summer camp in the US. It was conducted over six weeks and gathered evidence from individual interviews, focus group interviews and unstructured conversations. The three main findings were: (1) participants expressed overwhelmingly positive attitudes towards the experience, especially regarding social interactions. (2) This positive experience was perceived to only be possible at CIFC, where an engaging programme and a strong community supported participants in their phone-free experience. (3) As a result of (2), teenagers expressed concerns about applying their experience outside of camp. These findings have important implications for practitioners and contribute to pedagogical discussions regarding phones on outdoor environmental education programmes.

Profound Simplicity: Lessons Learned from Ed Schein on Rituals That Sustain and Nurture Relationships

As I attempt to digest Ed Schein's recent passing, I am present to the friendship I was honored to develop with him over the past 12 years and the voluminous lessons I learned. Like so many, my career was shaped by Ed Schein's scholarship. And yet, it was in our personal, unstructured conversations that I was most impacted by who he was, and the values and principles by which he lived. Our conversations centered on what creates, sustains and nurtures relationships all while we were doing so.

Examining voice assistants in the context of children’s speech

An estimated 3.25 billion voice assistants (VAs) are in homes around the world, but these devices are not always able to recognize and respond to children’s speech. To inform the design of VAs that support kids, we report on a lab study where 28 5- to 10-year-old participants interacted with a commercial VA to: (1) attempt to execute common VA-supported requests (such as setting an alarm), (2) recite a set of such scripts verbatim, and (3) engage in unstructured conversation. We find that devices only respond appropriately to the content of children’s speech half of the time. Frequency of appropriate responses increased with children’s age and as their discourse became more standardized. Based on themes in participants’ speech, we identify design opportunities in child-VA interaction, such as exploring a topic or responding to a conversational bid. In addition to our empirical findings, we contribute a structured corpus of children’s speech.

Efficacy of Unguided Conversation on Fluency and Speaking Confidence: A Case Study in South Korea

To date, there is limited research into the measurable benefits of unguided and unstructured conversation practice (typically a popular, in-demand service) for adult English language learners. This project looks to determine the differences in measured oral fluency as well as self-reported speaking confidence of South Korean university students before and after several months of conversational English practice with native English instructors. Participants were given weekly one-on-one “free talk” sessions with no grammatical instruction and very limited corrective feedback for a total of one hour. Sessions were recorded at early and late program intervals in order to calculate the average length of runs and speech rate. Moreover, students completed pre- and post-program surveys to estimate their overall confidence levels in L2 speaking. This project found limited change in fluency without direct corrective feedback. Furthermore, our measurements of students’ self-reported speaking confidence revealed inconsistent trends from the first to last sessions. This research seems to indicate that loosely structured, “coffee shop” style lessons should adopt a more structured curriculum in order to see more pronounced and measurable growth over time.

Theory of mind in naturalistic conversations between autistic and typically developing children and adolescents.

Conversation is a key part of everyday social interactions. Previous studies have suggested that conversational skills are related to theory of mind, the ability to think about other people's mental states, such as beliefs, knowledge, and emotions. Both theory of mind and conversation are common areas of difficulty for autistic people, yet few studies have investigated how people, including autistic people, use theory of mind during conversation. We developed a new way of measuring cToM using two rating scales: cToM Positive captures behaviors that show consideration of a conversation partner's mental states, such as referring to their thoughts or feelings, whereas cToM Negative captures behaviors that show a lack of theory of mind through violations of neurotypical conversational norms, such as providing too much, too little, or irrelevant information. We measured cToM in 50 pairs of autistic and typically developing children (ages 8-16 years) during 5-min "getting to know you" conversations. Compared to typically developing children, autistic children displayed more frequent cToM Negative behaviors but very similar rates of cToM Positive behaviors. Across both groups, cToM Negative (but not Positive) ratings were related to difficulties in recognizing emotions from facial expressions and a lower tendency to talk about others' mental states spontaneously (i.e., without being instructed to do so), which suggests that both abilities are important for theory of mind in conversation. Altogether, this study highlights both strengths and difficulties among autistic individuals, and it suggests possible avenues for further research and for improving conversational skills.

Overview of clusters and diphthongs in the discourse of Rahovec and its district

The paper aims to reflect the state of clusters and diphthongs in the discourse of Rahovec and its district. The study methodology has been done through unstructured interviews and free conversations with the subjects. Whereas, the results show these types of clusters and diphthongs: vowel cluster ue, vowel cluster ye, cluster ie and je, cluster ae and oe as well as the transition of the group vo to va. Based on the findings of the study, we can come to the conclusion that the discourse of Rahovec with its district has an old origin from the Indo-European and Latin languages.

Multilabel Emotion Recognition Technique considering the Characteristics of Unstructured Conversation Data

Due to the recent increase in non-face-to-face services due to COVID-19, the number of users communicating through messengers or SNS (social networking service) is increasing. As a large amount of data is generated by users, research on recognizing emotions by analyzing user information or opinions is being actively conducted. Conversation data such as SNS is freely created by users, so there is no set format. Due to these characteristics, it is difficult to analyze using AI (artificial intelligence), which leads to a decrease in the performance of the emotion recognition technique. Therefore, a processing method suitable for the characteristics of unstructured data is required. Among the unstructured data, most emotion recognition in Korean conversation recognizes a single emotion by analyzing emotion keywords or vocabulary. However, since multiple emotions exist complexly in a single sentence, research on multilabel emotion recognition is needed. Therefore, in this paper, the characteristics of unstructured conversation data are considered and processed for more accurate emotion recognition. In addition, we propose a multilabel emotion recognition technique that understands the meaning of dialogue and recognizes inherent and complex emotions. A deep learning model was compared and tested as a method to verify the usefulness of the proposed technique. As a result, performance was improved when it was processed in consideration of the characteristics of unstructured conversation data. Also, when the attention model was used, accuracy showed the best performance with 65.9%. The proposed technique can contribute to improving the accuracy and performance of conversational emotion recognition.

Radical re-imagination: centering a BIPOC library workforce in an asset-based autoethnography

PurposeAcademic BIPOC librarians oftentime struggle to envision themselves and navigate in White-dominant spaces due to deficit thinking. To better understand how DEIA efforts can bolster structural change in academic libraries, the two BIPOC authors opted to lean on an asset-based exercise–imagining a positive work environment made possible through a library staffed entirely by BIPOC individuals.Design/methodology/approachThrough collaborative autoethnography, the two authors interviewed one another and centered their unstructured conversations around one question: “What does an academic library composed entirely of a BIPOC workforce look like?” Three emergent themes were agreed upon and finalized by the two authors.FindingsThe authors' imagined library is able to foster a supportive community and also function efficiently thanks to its shared purpose grounded in DEIA. Despite relying on an asset-based framework, the authors found themselves having to reckon with trials and tribulations currently faced by BIPOC librarians. Effectively envisioning the “ideal” library environment is not possible without also engaging with librarianship's legacy of racial injustices.Originality/valueRecognizing that confronting systems of oppression naturally invokes trauma, this paper encourages librarians to challenge deficit thinking and instead rely on asset-based models to candidly imagine an anti-racist academic library. The authors acknowledge that BIPOC voices and experiences add tremendous value to the library workplace. At the heart of this paper is the belief that reparations for past racial injustices should not only fix past wrongdoings, but also contribute to positive workplace cultures.

Design in Iraq: Discourse and its Contextual Transformation

ABSTRACT This study tackles the topic of design in Iraq: its emergence and its signification of modernity since the post-independent era, during which Iraq was a regional center of pioneering Arabic movements in modern literature, arts, and architecture. Emergent design practices are visible in architecture and urban planning, which were delivered by key international architects. This study presents a historical account and contextual analysis of the vital contributions that these designs made to supporting the Iraqi modernity project. Moreover, it indicates the significant role and strategic domination of the sociopolitical order in shaping design practices and education in the country. Methodologically, this study draws from unstructured conversations with members of the Iraqi design community, followed by thematic and context analysis to identify design discourses transformation. The analysis demonstrates that in Iraq design: (a) is a signifier of modernity; (b) contributes to the enhancement of cultural identity and industrialization; (c) has been redirected toward patriotism; and (d) now suffers from decline and chaos.

Oral health problems linked to obstructive sleep apnea are not always recognized within dental care-As described by dental professionals.

ObjectivesObstructive sleep apnea (OSA) has an impact on an individual's quality of life and general health, and can also affect their oral health. The patient's experiences, together with intraoral signs and symptoms could indicate the presence of OSA. Knowledge that the patient has, or is at high risk for having OSA can help the dental healthcare provider maintain the oral health and general health for these patients. The purpose was to explore dentists and dental hygienists' experiences when encountering adult patients with potential, untreated and treated OSA.MethodsA qualitative inductive approach was used. Experienced dentists and dental hygienists working within Swedish Public Dental Service were strategically selected. Semi‐structured face‐to‐face interviews were performed followed by qualitative content analysis.ResultsInterviews from 13 participants, seven dental hygienist and six dentists, led to three areas describing varied experience: Importance of the patient encounter and identifying intraoral signs both of which describe experiences related to the importance of the initial unstructured conversation and focused clinical assessments, and strategies for nurturing care which point to interest about care, treatment, and collaborations with medical health care providers.ConclusionsDental professionals are not able to consistently recognize patients who have, or are at high risk for OSA. During the patient encounter, is it important to determine if a patient is at risk for, or has oral signs of OSA.

Assessing Language in Unstructured Conversation in People With Aphasia: Methods, Psychometric Integrity, Normative Data, and Comparison to a Structured Narrative Task.

Purpose This study evaluated interrater reliability (IRR) and test-retest stability (TRTS) of seven linguistic measures (percent correct information units, relevance, subject-verb-[object], complete utterance, grammaticality, referential cohesion, global coherence), and communicative success in unstructured conversation and in a story narrative monologue (SNM) in persons with aphasia (PWAs) and matched participants without aphasia (M-PWoAs). Furthermore, the relationship of language in unstructured conversation and SNM was investigated for these measures. Methods Twenty PWAs and 20 M-PWoAs participated in two unstructured conversations on different days with different speech-language pathologists trained as social conversation partners. An 8- to 12-min segment of each conversation was analyzed. Additionally, a wordless picture book was used to elicit an SNM sample at each visit. Correlational analyses were conducted to address the primary research questions. Normative range and minimal detectable change data were also calculated for the measures in both conditions. Results IRR and TRTS were moderate to good for parametric measures and moderate to excellent for nonparametric measures for both groups, except for TRTS for referential cohesion for the PWAs in conversation. Furthermore, in PWAs, a strong correlation was demonstrated for three of eight measures across conditions. Moderate or weaker correlations were demonstrated for three of eight measures, and correlations for two of eight measures were not significant. An ancillary finding was no significant differences occurred for sample-to-sample variability between the two conditions for any measure. Conclusions This study replicates previous research demonstrating the feasibility to reliably measure language in unstructured conversation in PWAs. Furthermore, this study provides preliminary evidence that language production varies for some measures between unstructured conversation and SNM, contributing to a literature base that demonstrates language variation between different types of monologue. Thus, these findings suggest that inclusion of the specific types of discourse of interest to the PWA may be important for comprehensive assessment of aphasia. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.16569360.