this paper examines the theoretical rationales and practical aspects of task-based language teaching (tblt) with particular reference to research findings in efl/esl contexts. the definitional scope of the term ‘task’, polarizations in terms of task vs. non-task, and its relation to different language teaching approaches have engendered conceptual and methodological ambiguities.  moreover, fact...

Getting students to collaborate on group projects in a face-to-face scenario can be difficult enough -but how does one approach collaborative projects in a Web-based environment? This article explores the story of one course that used asynchronous Web-based conferencing software to mediate the group process in a problem-based learning scenario. Through careful planning, assignment structure, an...

Work on generative planning syste[ns ha-~ focllsed On two dit,crsc aplJroac}lcs to plan construction. Ilierarchical task network (11’~N) planners build plans by successively refining high-level goals into lowerlevel activities. Operator-baqed planners employ means-end analysis to formulate plans consisting of Iow-level activities. While many have argued the universal dominance of a single appro...

AI Planning & Scheduling techniques are being widely used to adapt learning paths to the special features and needs of students both in distance learning and lifelong learning environments. However, instructors strongly rely on Planning & Scheduling experts to encode and review the domains for the planner/scheduler to work. This paper presents an approach to automatically extract a fully operat...

This paper introduces orion, a conversational system that performs off-line tasks and initiates later contact with a user at a pre-negotiated time. Orion has two major episodes of activity: the enrollment of new tasks and the execution of pending tasks. The task manager periodically checks the pending tasks and updates their status, sending off requests to other servers for information and poss...

We approach the problem of adaptively combining the predictions of an ensemble of seasonal climate models as a Multi-task Learning (MTL) problem. Unlike the traditional MTL setting, we only have a single functional task (combining the predictions ensemble members), where we consider multiple forecast periods from the same suite of models as our multiple learning tasks. Even though the same mode...

Recently, the role of task analysis in design has been brought into question. It has been argued, for example, that task analysis leads to the non-creative redesign of existing artefacts. In this paper. we offer a view of task analysis that resolves this problem. In particular, we argue that by focusing upon the analysis of user/operator goals rather than an existing task implementation, task a...

This paper reviews literature on visual information presentation in depth. A theoretical model of 3-D spatial interactions by Previc (1998) is presented. Fundamental research on spatial attention and applied studies in the fields of aviation and automobile driving are described, which were concerned with the task-specificity of information presentation in space. Necessary research is identified...

In this paper we present the GraphHTN algorithm, a hybrid planning algorithm that does Hierarchical Task-Network (HTN) planning using a combination of HTN-style problem reduction and Graphplan-style planning-graph generation. We also present experimental results comparing GraphHTN with ordinary HTN decomposition (as implemented in the UMCP planner) and ordinary Graphplan search (as implemented ...