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CALL FOR PAPERS – 5TH WORKSHOP ON CULTURALLY-AWARE TUTORING SYSTEMS (CATS2014)

To occur in conjunction with the 12th International Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems (http://its2014.its-conferences.com/), June 5 or 6, 2014. Manoa, Hawaii.

Url: http://www.cats-ws.org
Contact email: cats.workshop@gmail.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SIGoCAT


PRESENTATION

The CATS2014 workshop is a follow-up to a series of successful CATS workshop editions, organized in conjunction to ITS2008, AIED2009, ITS2010, and AIED2013.

A deeper consideration of culture has now become a recognized topic in many technology domains (e.g. HCI, autonomous agents, robotics, usability) including the ITS research field, and over the years, the CATS workshop series has clearly established itself as the premier venue for presentations and discussions of research bridging culture and educational technologies.

Culture is indeed a critical consideration in research on ITS since it has a strong impact on many cognitive and affective processes, including those related to learning. In the past few years, dedicated culturally-aware technologies, guidelines and methods have been proposed. Promising results are now emerging along with new exciting challenges for our community.

CATS@ITS2014 will thus be a great occasion to continue investigating the place of culture in the ITS research field. It proposes to consider culture and ITS from three perspectives:
- designing ITS systems to teach cultural knowledge and intercultural skills;
- enculturating ITS systems (i.e. developing both pedagogical strategies and system infrastructure mechanisms that incorporate cultural features);
- considering cultural challenges in the ITS research cycle, and ways to address them.

In addition to offering a forum to state-of-the-art research of this domain, CATS2014 intends to engage participants in working to expand the reach of ITS research to a greater global audience, including those disadvantaged due to a lack of resources or other obstacles.

Research at varying levels of development, and discussing features of CATS or results of CATS-related studies will be considered. Position papers are also welcome as well as papers to support in-situ demonstrations of CATS (if you want to submit such a paper, please contact the workshop organizers at cats.workshop@gmail.com) .

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- ITS systems for learning about cultures,
- ITS systems for learning intercultural skills,
- serious games and culture,
- digitization of cultural knowledge and cultural skills for ITS purpose,
- collaborative learning and cultural diversity,
- identification of cultural variations that are relevant for ITS activities and systems,
- enculturation of adaptive mechanisms for ITS activities and systems,
- relations between culture and Human-Computer Interaction,
- relations between culture and cognition,
- relations between culture and affect,
- relations between culture and motivation,
- relations between culture and educational features,
- cultural influences on the ITS research production,
- computational modeling of individual cultural traits,
- computational modeling of past and present cultural contexts and environments,
- computational modeling of past and present cultural groups,
- computational modeling of dynamics between varying socio-cultural groups,
- assessment of cultural features of ITS systems,
- international collaborations for cultural investigations in ITS.

It is important that each submission establishes a connection with all the following three dimensions: education, technology, and culture.


IMPORTANT DATES

March 20, 2014 Paper submission (only abstract is mandatory)
April 4, 2014 Paper submission (full version mandatory)
April 20, 2014 Acceptance Notification
May 3, 2014 Camera-ready paper due
June 5 or 6, 2014 CATS2014


SUBMISSION PROCEDURE

Submissions must be exclusively in Portable Document Format (.pdf).
Submissions must be in English and should be between 5 and 10 pages according to the Springer LNCS format enforced by the workshop (see http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0 ).
Articles will be evaluated by two or more members of the program committee. Authors of accepted papers will be invited to make an oral presentation during the workshop. At least one author for each accepted paper will have to attend the workshop.
Please consult the CATS2014 website (http://www.cats-ws.org) for further and updated details about submission, or contact the workshop organizers at cats.workshop@gmail.com


ORGANIZATION AND PROGRAM COMMITTEE

Organizers

Emmanuel G. Blanchard, IDÛ Interactive Inc., Canada
Isabela Gasparini, University of Santa Catarina State, Brazil
Amy Ogan, Carnegie Mellon University, USA
Ma. Mercedes T. Rodrigo, Ateneo de Manila University, The Philippines

Program Committee Members

Mohammed Abdelrazek, King Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia
Ivon Arroyo, University of Massachussetts at Amherst, USA
Ryan SjD Baker, Teachers College Columbia University, USA
Jacqueline Bourdeau, Téléuniversity of Québec, Canada
Ignacio Casas Raposo, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, Chile
Júnia Coutinho Anacleto, Federal University of Sao Paulo, Brazil
Vania Dimitrova, University of Leeds, UK
Benedict DuBoulay, University of Sussex, UK
Colette Faucher, Aix-Marseille University, France
Monique Grandbastien, University of Lorraine, France
Rudiger Heimgartner, Intercultural User Interface Consulting, Germany
Tsukasa Hirashima, Hiroshima University, Japan
Seiji Isotani, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil
W. Lewis Johnson, Alelo Inc., USA
Stan Karanasios, University of Leeds, UK
Cher Ping Lim, Hong Kong Institute of Education, Hong Kong
Chee Kit Looi, National Institute of Education, Singapore
Phaedra Mohammed, University of the West Indies, Trinidad and Tobago
Roger Nkambou, University of Québec at Montréal, Canada
José Palazzo, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
Elaine M. Raybourn, Sandia National Laboratories, USA
Genaro Rebolledo Mendez, University of Veracruz, Mexico
Matthias Rehm, Aalborg University, Denmark
Benjamin Nye, University of Memphis, USA
Marcelo Pimenta, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
Silvia Schiaffino, ISISTAN, Argentina
Riichiro Mizoguchi, Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Japan
Mei Si, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA
Bao Hui Zhang, Nanjing University, China
Imran Zualkernan, American University of Sharjah, Unified Arab Emirates
Beverly Woolf, University of Massachussetts at Amherst, USA