CALL FOR PAPERS for the

International Workshop on
Personalization Approaches in Learning Environments (PALE)
http://adenu.ia.uned.es/workshops/pale2012/

July 16-20, 2012, Montreal, Canada
in conjunction with UMAP Conference (http://umap2012.polymtl.ca/en)

Personalization approaches in learning environments can be addressed from different and complementary perspectives. PALE workshop aims to offer a fruitful crossroad where interrelated issues can be contrasted, such as pedagogic conversational agents, responsive open learning environments, and user modeling for all. The benefits of the personalization and adaptation of computer applications have been widely reported both in e-learning (the use of electronic media to teach, assess, or otherwise support learning) and b-learning (to combine traditional face-to-face instruction with electronic media – blended learning).

As discussed at PALE 2011 , there are still open issues to be addressed in this field, such as the agents’ embodiment, the modeling of the agent behavior for personalization purposes and its storage, personalization of the whole learning environment and its functionalities, finding an appropriate threshold between the learner control and expert guidance, tracking affective states, investigation of innovative learning scenarios,
harmonization of educational and technological standards, automatic annotation for accessibility purposes in existing learning object repositories, as well as appropriate methodologies for the joint evaluation of personalization and accessibility.

PALE format moves away from the classic 'mini-conferences' approach and will follow the Learning Cafe methodology to promote discussions on some of the open issues regarding personalization in learning environments. Two Learning Cafes will be set up. Each one consists in brief presentations of the key questions posed and small group discussions with participants randomly grouped in tables. Each table will be moderated by one expert in the topic under discussion and participants will change tables during the discussion with the aim to share ideas among the groups.

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Topics
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The higher-level research question to be addressed in the workshop is: “Which approaches can be followed to personalize learning environments?” It will be considered in various contexts: interactive, personal, and inclusive learning environments.

In this sense, the topics of this workshop include (not limited) the following:
• Motivation, benefits, and issues of personalization in learning environments
• Approaches for the personalization of inclusive, personal and interactive learning environments
• Techniques and methods
• Results and metrics
• Social and educational issues
• Use of pedagogic conversational agents
• Affective computing
• User and context awareness in personalization of learning environments

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Paper Submissions
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Research papers must be prepared in 4-6 page LNCS format and submitted through EasyChair (http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=pale2012) in PDF format. All papers will be double-blind reviewed by at least three independent reviewers with expertise in the area.

Accepted papers will be included in the workshop proceedings published on-line by CEUR Workshop Proceedings (ISSN 1613-0073) and at the workshop webpage. Selected papers might be published in a special issue of a relevant journal of the field (details to be announced).

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Important Dates
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May 13, 2012: Submission of papers
June 04, 2012: Notification of acceptance
June 18, 2012: Camera-ready paper
July 16-20, 2012: PALE workshop (one of these days, to be announced by UMAP)

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Organizing Committee
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Milos Kravcik, RWTH Aachen University, Germany
Olga C. Santos, Spanish National University for Distance Education (UNED), Spain
Jesus G. Boticario, Spanish National University for Distance Education (UNED), Spain
Diana Pérez-Marín, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain

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Program Committee
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Maria Bielikova, Slovak University of Technology, Slovakia
Rafael Calvo, University of Sydney, Australia
Zoraida Callejas, Universidad de Granada, Spain
Rosa Carro, Universidad Autónoma, Spain
Sabine Graf, Athabascau University, Canada
David Griol, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain
Luis Hernández, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain
Judy Kay, University of Sydney, Australia
Ralf Klamma, RWTH Aachen University, Germany
Ramón López-Cózar, Universidad de Granada, Spain
Noboru Matsuda, Carnegie Mellon University, USA
Beatriz Mencía, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain
Alexander Nussbaumer, Graz University of Technology, Austria
Ana Paiva, INESC-ID, Portugal
Alexandros Paramythis, Johannes Kepler University, Austria
Dimitris Spiliotopoulos, University of Athens, Greece
Carsten Ullrich, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China
George Veletsianos, University of Texas, USA
Martin Wolpers, Fraunhofer FIT, Germany

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Workshop History
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PALE 2011 workshop took place for the first time at UMAP 2011 and merged three related workshops on personalization in e-learning: APLEC, ROLE and TUMAS-A. Its papers were published in the proceedings (http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-732/) and selected ones also in UMAP 2011 Workshops, LNCS 7138, by L. Ardissono and T. Kuflik. A summary reported the main outcomes (http://www.springerlink.com/content/1885733334508tj6/).

APLEC was held in 2010 in conjunction with the International Conference on User Modelling, Adaptation and Personalization (UMAP) and focused on new techniques to model learners using the Pedagogic Conversational Agent (PCA) technologies.

The ROLE workshop was initiated in the project of the same name and has organized a successful workshop at the PLE 2010 Conference. It aimed to empower the learner to take control over his or her own learning processes. The ROLE project develops an infrastructure that enables learners to construct their own learning environments according to their personal and contextual needs such as accreditation and corporate goals. The challenge is to implement and test a user-driven framework based on Web 2.0 technologies. ROLE fosters the idea that most learning takes place informally, in different contexts and scenarios, and that content is not provided by one single provider.

TUMAS-A is a series of workshops being organized in conjunction with relevant conferences from different but related fields. The 1st TUMAS-A workshop was organized in 2007 in the User Modeling conference. Relevant feedback was obtained regarding how users and their
interactions should be modeled. The 2nd TUMAS-A workshop was held in the WI/IAT 2008 conference and put the focus on the intelligent technology that could be used to support that modeling. The 3rd TUMAS-A workshop took place in the AIED 2009 conference and
provided new insights on knowledge representation for learning systems that care for any type of user, including their interaction and accessibility needs. The 4th TUMASA workshop was embedded in the RecSysTEL workshop at ACM RecSys 2010 conference and focused on how recommender systems can be used in e-learning environments to support learners and educators in their learning and teaching tasks. Finally, the 5th TUMAS-A workshop was part of PALE 2011. This year, the 6th edition of TUMAS-A will be held in conjunction with the 13th International Conference on Computers Helping People with Special Needs (ICCHP 2012). However, due to the history underneath, synergies with PALE 2012 will be established.