2012

Monique Grandbastien est professeure émérite à l’Université de Lorraine

L’exposé portera sur la notion de présence en ligne, son extraordinaire développement au travers des réseaux sociaux et les défis qui en découlent pour les Environnements d’Apprentissage. Nous ferons un bilan de l’existant et des problèmes à résoudre. Nous proposerons ensuite, dans le contexte des Environnements Personnalisés d’Apprentissage, un exemple de réponse, celui du projet OP4L qui utilise des données de présence en ligne issues de plusieurs réseaux sociaux pour recommander des ressources humaines dont la disponibilité en ligne a été identifiée Nous aborderons successivement les objectifs, les modèles construits pour atteindre ces objectifs, notamment les ontologies qui permettent la description du contexte d’apprentissage, l’implantation technique au sein d’une plate-forme Moodle avec des données issues de réseaux sociaux. OP4L est déployé sur un environnement existant destiné à l’enseignement d’un cours de Génie Logiciel sur les patrons de conception nommé DEPTHS. Le prototype disponible sur le site Web sera démontré. Enfin les résultats des premières expérimentations avec des étudiants de génie logiciel de plusieurs pays seront donnés et commentés.

 

9 novembre 2012. Salle SH-3620, 3ème étage. 200, rue Sherbrooke O.

Ellen Bialystok
York University

Abstract

A growing body of research using both behavioral and neuroimaging data points to a significant effect of bilingualism on cognitive outcomes across the lifespan. The main finding is evidence for the enhancement of executive control at all stages in the lifespan, with the most dramatic results being maintained cognitive performance in elderly adults, and protection against the onset of dementia. A more complex picture emerges when the cognitive advantages of bilingualism are considered together with the costs to linguistic processing.  I will review evidence for both these outcomes and propose a framework for understanding the mechanism that could lead to these positive and negative consequences of bilingualism, including protection against dementia in older age.

Ellen Bialystok is a Distinguished Research Professor of Psychology at York University and Associate Scientist at the Rotman Research Institute of the Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care.  She received her Ph.D. from the University of Toronto in 1976 studying the relation between children’s conceptual and linguistic development, especially as it applied to spatial cognition.  She then turned to the problem of second language acquisition and investigated the process by which children and adults acquire additional languages. The model she developed in this research showing how interactions between specific linguistic systems and generalized knowledge systems were required to learn a second language formed the basis of her research examining metalinguistic awareness and literacy acquisition in young children. Much of her research in the past 20 years has focused on the effect of bilingualism on children’s language and cognitive development, showing accelerated mastery of specific cognitive processes for bilingual children. More recently, this research has been extended to investigations of adult processing and cognitive aging, showing the continuity of these bilingual advantages into adulthood and the protection against cognitive decline in healthy aging for bilingual older adults. She is the author or editor of 7 books, over 100 scientific papers in journals, and more than 50 chapters in books. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and among her awards are a Killam Research Fellowship, Walter Gordon Research Fellowship, Dean’s Award for Outstanding Research, the Donald T. Stuss Award for Research Excellence at the Baycrest Geriatric Centre, the President’s Research Award of Merit at York University, and the 2010 Killam Prize for the Social Sciences. Her most recent prize is the 2011 Donald O. Hebb award for Distinguished Contribution to Psychology.

Vendredi 26 octobre, 15 hrs, Salle W-5215 de l'UQAM.

 

Pascal Hitzler
Wright State University

Abstract

The Semantic Web is gaining momentum. Driven by over 10 years of focused project funding in the US and the EU, Semantic Web Technologies are now entering application areas in industry, academia, government, and the open Web. Central to this transfer into practice is the Linked Data effort, which has already resulted in the publication, on the Web, of billions of pieces of information in Semantic Web compatible data formats such as RDF and OWL. This provides the basic data needed for establishing intelligent system applications on the Web in the tradition of Semantic Web Technologies.

In this talk, we discuss the current state of the art, with an emphasis on Linked Data and required next steps towards the bigger Semantic Web vision.

13 avril 2012, 15h00, salle DS-1950

Wednesday, May 30th, 4p.m.,  Room W-5215, UQAM

Summary

June 2012 is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Alan Turing, the father of computer science and artificial intelligence. Turing's formalisation algorithm and computation laid the foundation for the development of computers and computing transformeding our lives over the last half century. His later work on the Turing Test asked whether machines can think and set the agenda for what are now called the cognitive sciences: What is the causal mechanism that gives individual intelligent systems the power to do what they can do?  But over the last twenty years the work of another visionary Englishman, Tim Berners-Lee, has led to another disruptive technology, the World Wide Web, which harnesses the power of computer technology combined with human intelligence. In “Weaving the Web” Tim described this combination of computer power and people power as a social machine.

The characteristics of social machines suggest that we are witnessing the development of a new type of computing machine that does not behave like a Turing machine. To study social machines we need to develop new methodologies and draw on many different disciplines, including cognitive science, social science, economics, law, and management as well as mathematics and computer science.  The characteristics of social machines give rise to interesting new questions about distributed cognition, collective intelligence and “extended mind”. The Turing test applies to individuals: Can there be a social consciousness that is distributed across minds and media?

Wendy Hall is Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton, UK, and Dean of the Faculty of Physical and Applied Sciences. She was Head of the School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) from 2002 to 2007. One of the first computer scientists to undertake serious research in multimedia and hypermedia, she has been at its forefront ever since. The influence of her work has been significant in many areas including digital libraries, the development of the Semantic Web, and the emerging research discipline of Web Science. Her current research includes applications of the Semantic Web and exploring the interface between the life sciences and the physical sciences. She is Managing Director of the Web Science Trust.

In addition to playing a prominent role in the development of her subject, she also helps shape science and engineering policy and education. Through her leadership roles on national and international bodies, she has shattered many glass ceilings, readily deploying her position on numerous national and international bodies to promote the role of women in SET, and acting as an important role model for others.
She became a Dame Commander of the British Empire in the 2009 UK New Year's Honours list, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in June 2009. She was elected President of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in July 2008, and the first person from outside North America to hold this position. Until July 2008, she was Senior Vice President of the Royal Academy of Engineering, is currently a member of the UK Prime Minister's Council for Science and Technology, and is a founder member of the Scientific Council of the European Research Council.  She was President of the British Computer Society (2003-4) and an EPSRC Senior Research Fellow from 1996 to 2002.

Bryce Huebner, Philosophy Department, Georgetown University

 

Abstract

Andy Clark has often appealed to a growing range of empirical data supporting the claim that cognition relies on extracranial features of the world. I resist this claim, and argue that there is something deeply amiss in existing arguments for extended cognition: they do not provided an empirically plausible strategy for distinguishing between cognitive systems, the environments that they inhabit, and the information that they exploit. In solving this 'boundary demarcation problem', I argue, we must focus on the integration of computational mechanisms, and then explain how an interfaced network of components yield robust patterns of system-level goal-directed behavior. This perspective can help us to see why most appeals to extended cognition are theoretically and empirically implausible; but I argue that it also helps to demonstrate the ways in which mechanisms that cross-cut bodily boundaries can be interfaced to produce a cognitive system. Specifically, I argue that the transactive memory systems—when they are properly grounded by an account of the neurological mechanisms that facilitate episodic remembering—constitute a case of genuinely extended cognition.

 

Friday, May 25th, 3p.m., Room W-5215

 

Vendredi 30 mars à 15h, salle DS-1950

Jean-Marc Labat, Laboratoire d'Informatique de Paris 6

Résumé

Parmi les différentes acceptions du terme serious game, l'équipe MOCAH privilégie les approches fondées sur une métaphore intrinsèque, c'est-a-dire des jeux vidéo dans lesquels l'objet même du jeu est le contenu sérieux. Dans cet exposé, je montrerai les implications de ce choix en termes de méthodologie de conception, de suivi du joueur ainsi qu'en termes d'outil auteur.

Vendredi 10 février à 15h, salle DS-1950

Patrick Cohendet, HEC

Résumé

Cet exposé s'efforcera de montrer que dans un territoire les expressions créatives transitent du niveau micro au niveau macro (et réciproquement), à travers l’accumulation, la combinaison, l’enrichissement et le renouvellement de parcelles de connaissances, dispersées dans un vaste réseau, dans lequel les individus, les communautés et les firmes bénéficient de l’apport des autres pour promouvoir leur potentiel créatif respectif. Il développera l'hypothèse principale selon laquelle la dynamique des activités créatives repose sur trois différentes couches sociales d’un territoire: l’underground de l’individu, le middleground des communautés et l’upperground des firmes ou organisations. En particulier, le middleground apparaît comme un élément central de la ville créative. Le cas de la ville de Montréal (notamment Ubisoft et Le cirque du Soleil) est analysé et permettra d’illustrer ce modèle. Au-delà ces analyses peuvent apporter des éclairages sur les conditions de nature à favoriser des processus d’innovation multi acteurs dans d’autres secteurs.