University of Washington: Linguistics: LING 575: Spring 2015: Syllabus

LING 575 - Spoken Dialog Systems
Spring 2015
Specialized Topics

Each student will be responsible for selecting a topic from the list of topics below to present and lead class discussion on. This will involve presenting the main ideas from 2-3 papers and synthesizing the challenges in the area and the approaches taken to them.

A core reading for each topic is identified on the associated topic page. Everyone is expected to have read that paper prior to class. At least 2-3 other major papers are identified, and other supporting papers may also be posted. Presenters should read those papers, and are also encouraged to find other related materials. The ACL anthology is an excellent resource, as is the SIGDial web site.

To-Dos

Participants

Read at minimum the primary reading in advance of class. Reading the secondary articles is, of course, encouraged.
For each week, please choose one of the primary papers as the focus of a critical reading assignment.

Mitzenmacher and Ramsey's

A brief summary of the main point of the paper.
Notes about the interest of the paper from an NLP perspective
At least one observation about: its relation to related work, strengths or weaknesses, ways it could be improved, ways it could be extended, or how it could be used to improve another application.
Any notes about questions or issues for class discussion.

The assignment should be submitted by 11:45p.m. Wednesdays, but submitting earlier will allow me to review the comments prior to class.

Presenters

Presenters should plan to present for 10-15 minutes, with an additional 10 minutes for discussion.
The members of the class will also have read the paper, so you do not need to detail all the content in the paper(s). You can focus on the primary paper to lay out main concepts, and use the other papers to provide contrasts or supplementary examples. Instead, you should present a synthesis and analysis of the topic, abstracting away from the gory details:

What problems are being addressed? Why are they interesting/challenging?
What are the goals and main claims of the paper(s)?
What sorts of data/approaches/evaluation are employed?
What are the main things you've learned about the topic?
Provide a *constructive* critique.

How feasible are these ideas to implement in a dialog system?
What would be the effect of implementing these sorts of techniques in dialog systems?
Are the approaches more motivated by modeling human conversational behavior or engineering considerations?

Presentation material (slides) may be in PowerPoint, PDF, Google Docs, etc. It would be appreciated if the slides were provided prior to the start of class.
Online presenters should make sure to have a microphone available. It is recommended that online presenters enter the meeting room a few minutes before class to allow for checking of audio levels.

List of possible specialized topics:

Presenter Topic

Martin Miscommunication and Repairs

Recognizing user affect in human-computer dialog

Burrell Persona and Personification in dialog

Braun Dialog with Different User Populations

Lish Turn-taking and Backchannels

Myhre Incremental Processing of Dialog

Vedder Multi-modal dialog

Mulvey Dialog act taxonomies

Arshad Dialog act recognition

Marsh Dialog genres: information-seeking, tutoring, conversational

Baligh Modelling affect in dialog

Grounding

Mixed Initiative

Riebold Multi-party dialog

Xue Sentiment and subjectivity in dialog

Chewning Reference and anaphora in dialog

Morrison Information structure and prosody in dialog

Van Anh Recognition and understanding of prosody

Burducea Dialog in other NLP applications: search, translation , question-answering

Presenter	Topic
Martin	Miscommunication and Repairs
	Recognizing user affect in human-computer dialog
Burrell	Persona and Personification in dialog
Braun	Dialog with Different User Populations
Lish	Turn-taking and Backchannels
Myhre	Incremental Processing of Dialog
Vedder	Multi-modal dialog
Mulvey	Dialog act taxonomies
Arshad	Dialog act recognition
Marsh	Dialog genres: information-seeking, tutoring, conversational
Baligh	Modelling affect in dialog
	Grounding
	Mixed Initiative
Riebold	Multi-party dialog
Xue	Sentiment and subjectivity in dialog
Chewning	Reference and anaphora in dialog
Morrison	Information structure and prosody in dialog
Van Anh	Recognition and understanding of prosody
Burducea	Dialog in other NLP applications: search, translation , question-answering

LING 575 - Spoken Dialog Systems Spring 2015 Specialized Topics

To-Dos

LING 575 - Spoken Dialog Systems
Spring 2015
Specialized Topics