Strange Aeons

It is rather late in the season for me to address this now but maybe by posting about it I will remind myself to try out some of these ideas next year (<ominous clouds/dark horizons>assuming there is a teaching next year for me</ominous clouds/dark horizons>). Over at casting out nines Robert has made a few points about how he begins the teaching year, for example, spending about ten minutes on course structure before diving straight into the material - something that I could afford to do more often- rather than spending most, if not all, of the first session telling the students what to expect. As one of the commenters points out, this approach has to be differentiated depending upon the level of the students, more support and gentle introductions for first and second years versus diving straight in for the third, fourth, and postgrads. Screen casts to illustrate aspects of course management are an interesting idea, something that I think I will definitely try out with Araucaria next year, as, year on year, students have complained about how unintuitive the interface is. With course management though I don't think that even first year computing students need a screencast to introduce them to using wordpress which is how I do all of my course management. What is most interesting, and something that I hadn't really considered, is the idea that many students form their lasting impressions of the module in the first few moments, and that these impressions stay with them throughout the semester. Managing those impressions, and hence the expectations and feelings of the students in the first few moments could, as a result, have a large effect on how smoothly the rest of the module runs. Finally, I like the idea of using a list of assignments to give the students a constant stream of activities and things to do. Mostly, outside of labs and lectures, I have the feeling that many students don't do anything related to their modules. With the advent of the new attendance registers in the school many more students are turning up regularly to their lectures but I am not sure of how much additional attention is being paid to course materials. I have always assumed that most students were at least as interested in the subject matter as me and that they would therefore be reading the required texts and doing their own background readings. In all likelihood, except for official assessments and exams at the end, I know that there is very little actual set work for my modules. I don't mark lab exercises I just expect them to be done as I know that they are essential to being able to both complete the courseworks and perform successfully in the exam. Maybe what I could do is start setting more work, more specific readings, and more exercises so that the students can engage in deliberate practise from an earlier point in the module rather than relying on trying to stay awake during lectures and cramming shortly before the exams.

According to this Time Higher Ed. article, Ulster University is ring-fencing new permanent posts within the university so that suitable existing staff coming to the end of fixed-term contracts can be given an opportunity to take them on. This is the only university that I am aware of that is taking concrete, public steps to providing a clear and stable career path for university employees, although I would be delighted to hear of others. I think that any university that is trying to reverse the trend towards fixed term contracts should be applauded for their public show of faith and commitment towards their employees.

As somebody who has been employed on fixed term contracts for several years and is finding it very tiresome, I am happy that something is starting to happen, I am just unhappy that it is not yet (?) my employer.

However it is interesting that this approach is portrayed in a negative light in the THE article. The so-called insider who brought this to the notice of the THE is quoted as saying that this policy will lead to the decline of the university as only "low-calibre fixed-term staff unable to find employment elsewhere" will be taken on permanently. This despite the fact that the university opens up the job posting to external applicants if nobody suitable can be found.

Interestingly the University itself would not comment on the matter which is a pity because I think that they should be trumpeting it from the rooftops. The increasing casualisation of University employment means that the majority of research employees are employed on fixed term contracts. For example, at Dundee the UCU figures for employment are as follows:

• 46.9% of teaching & research academics employed on fixed-term contracts
• 80.9% of teaching only academics employed on fixed-term contracts
• 97.1% of research only academics employed on fixed-term contracts

(Figures for 1995. Source: UCU)

This is despite an, as yet unfulfilled, public undertaken commitment upon the part of many universities to reverse the trend via the Research Concordat. Given that the higher education sector reportedly generates output worth more than £59 billion and supports over 668,500 jobs it could be seen as an important part of both the economy and social structure of Britain, in fact H.E. is actually more valuable to the UK than the pharmceutical industry . It strikes me that some measure of job security and a more clear career development path wouldn't be too much to ask for. Perhaps the performance of researchers would be enhanced if the 97.1% of researchers weren't increasingly stressed and preoccupied with the impending end of their current contract (and 2-3 years is not a long time in terms of a career).

I can only hope that more universities (hint Dundee) will show the same faith in their existing employees and will take their lead from Ulster University.

Note:

Whilst researching this piece I found out about a recent meeting at Dundee on the website of the College of Life Sciences PostDoc Association. I didn't here about this, although given that I was in and out of the country, it was during the summer recess, and I was coming to the end of my existing contract and that was foremost on my mind, maybe it just slipped past me.

Recently a new project started in ARG:dundee, the argumentation research group at Dundee University. This project, the Dialectical Argumentation Machines project, is quite exciting and involves building tools for working with arguments on the web.The project abstract is as follows:

Humans use argument to express disagreement, to reach consensus and to both formulate and convey reasoning. The theory of argument has found wide application in artificial intelligence, providing mathematical structures for automated reasoning, communication protocols for distributed processing and linguistic models for natural language processing. A key stumbling block, however, has been joining together models that focus on abstract, mathematical relationships with those that focus on concrete, linguistic relationships. The first objective of this project is to develop for the first time a theoretical account that connects static, "monologic" argument with dynamic, multi-person, "dialogic" argument and ties together abstract, mathematical models with concrete, linguistic representations. Furthermore, models of argument have been predominantly confined to the lab. Our goal is to translate the research advances into high profile, large scale deployments using partners with enormous user bases. Prototype systems in this area have been sufficient to demonstrate the unique advantages of practical argumentation systems to potential users of this research such as those within the broadcasting domain. There is a demonstrated public demand for argument-based exploration of current issues with complex scientific and ethical dimensions, demonstrated, for example, by the longevity and success of high profile programming featuring topical issues discussed in a stylised argumentative debate format. The second objective of this project is to develop the theory into implemented components that can form a foundation for application development to support actual programmes with prototype testing Unique advantages afforded by the technology will allow users to interact with the programme material as if they were themselves contributors, allowing arguments to be probed, tested and extended, and the distinction between in-programme and post-programme content to be blurred. The interaction metaphor shifts from 'message-then-next-message' to 'question-answer-riposte-challenge...'. The rich structure is natural for users, and provides rich metadata for programme-makers. Finally, in 2007 an exciting vision of the "world-wide argumentation web" (WWAW) was laid out, in which systems such as those constructed to work alongside practical prototypes could interact, both with each other and with other debate and argumentation systems, both populist and academic. Argument fragments, expressed as resources on the Semantic Web, can cross-refer, allowing different debating systems to navigate the WWAW according to various rules of dialogue captured by dialectical games. To bring this vision of the WWAW into reality, the third and final objective of the project is to allow execution of arbitrary dialogue games on a platform that provides interfaces for human players, and both interfaces and control for computer players of dialogue games. In this way, we want to harness the enormous channel to market and the high-profile reference case that is offered by collaboration within broadcasting. At the same time, the project will be developing platform technology that can support exploitation in other areas. During the project, we will work with the Scottish Mediation Network in the context of mediation tools, with the Ontario courts in the context of judicial summaries, and with the Universities of Lugano and Groningen in the context of legal education to identify exploitation routes for the technology.

Although I am not employed by this project it has brought the opportunity to increase the size of the group with the addition of three new members, Mark Snaith, who was one of my honours project students last year working on OVA and worked with ARG:dundee over the summer developing the newlook argdb and integrating it with OVA, John Lawrence, who originally developed MAgtALO whilst an MSc student working for Chris, and Floris Bex who recently completed his Ph.D thesis, entitled "Evidence for a Good Story" supervised by Henry. These new members all bring different perspectives to the group discussion but already it seems that there are now enough of us in the group that it is less hard work to keep the discussions going. Before we all had to work harder to share the load of running a group discussion between three of us. That is much easier with six.

My final day in Pasadena I had a few hours to kill in the morning because my flight wasn't until early evening so I packed, booked my supershuttle ride, checked out, left my luggage in the hotel luggage facility, and went for breakfast in the old town. I spent a couple of hours wandering around with the hope of tiring myself out so that I might sleep on the plane later. Around lunchtime I returned to the hotel had humous and flatbread sitting at the bar and got talking to the bartender. We started talking about Whisky and I pointed out that I like Bourbon and that a particular favourite is Wild Turkey. At this the bartended informs me that Wild Turkey really isn't very good and he lines up about eight glasses and proceeds to take me through a succession of top quality Bourbons, starting with something just a little more up market than Wild Turkey and finishing with a 146% proof rare single barrel. Needless to say he earned himself a very good tip and I felt that I had a good chance of falling asleep later on the aeroplane. My flight from LAX to CDG was uneventful, in the early hours of the morning I got up to stretch my legs and spent about two hours talking to a retired social worker from California named Chester who was on his way to Europe with his wife. It turned out that he had visited Dundee 30 odd years ago to attend a social work convention. He had also spent some time in England and told me what it was like to be a black man in Britain at that time. Because of heavy immigration at that time many people thought that he was West Indian and in Britain for work, rather than a U.S. citizen and skilled social worker so thinks the attitudes that he experienced then were partly as a result of that. We put the world to rights for a couple of hours before turbulence meant that we had to return to our respective seats. I arrived at CDG late morning and spent a couple of hours asleep across three seats in terminal 2E waiting for my connection to Edinburgh. Before midnight on the sunday I was home, having started travelling at around 4PM the previous day. It's good to be home.

The final day of IJCAI was much better in terms of topics that I had either an active research interest in, or at least sufficient background understanding to get something out of the sessions. Of particular interest today were the Coalitions and Coordination session and the Negotiation and Commitment session, both chaired by Michael Wooldridge, and the second Argumentation session chaired by Iyad Rahwan. Papers of particular interest today were:

1. Dialectical Abstract Argumentation: A Characterization of the Marking Criterion Nicolás D. Rotstein, Martín O. Moguillansky, Guillermo R. Simari
2. A Unified Framework for Representation and Development of Dialectical Proof Procedures in Argumentation Phan Minh Dung, Phan Min Thang
3. Labellings and Games for Extended Argumentation Frameworks Sanjay Modgil
4. Computational Properties of Resolution-based Grounded Semantics Pietro Baroni, Paul E. Dunne, Massimiliano Giacomin

That evening many of the argumentation folk me up for dinner, including Sanjay Modgil, Iyad Rahwan, Adrian Pearce, and myself. I finally got to meet and chat with Phan Minh Dung, although we spent more time talking about sport than argumentation -- go figure! After dinner Iyad, Adrian, and I went for a final pint and listened to some live music before heading back to our respective hotels. All in all I would say that IJCAI has been tremendously interesting and has given me a lot of food for thought, introduced me to many people that I might not otherwise have me, and provided me with a good list of research ideas to pursue over the next year on top of the list of things that I already have going on.

Interesting sessions on Description Logics, which I didn't have enough background to really get a lot out of but I am hearing a lot about these logics at the moment and think that it might be useful to learn about. I bought the second edition of the Description Logic handbook with my conference discount form the Cambridge publishing table. The rest of the sessions today were a little ho-hum for me. One of the problems with IJCAI is that it brings into sharp relief just how limited an individuals understanding of A.I. is as a discipline, especially at the cutting edge which is what a conference is about. I managed to get away for a couple of hours in the afternoon and visited the Huntington Library and Gardens because I needed a change of scenery. This is nearly two weeks of pretty much solid work in a different environment to usual so a little bit of a break was on the cards. I didn't investigate the library or art collection because my aim was to see the gardens which were on Monty Don's recent BBC series "Around the World in 80 Gardens". As the Huntington was only about 5 minutes drive from my hotel I got the hotel shuttle service to drop me off there. The first thing that I did was to investigate the desert garden before seeing the jungle garden then having tea and scones in the "English" tea room. After that I had time to make a quick visit to the Japanese and Chinese gardens before rounding off my visit with a trip to the hot house to see the Orchids.

Today was the first argumentation session of the IJCAI technical track chaired by Stefan Woltran. I am quite impressed that there are now two argumentation sessions in the main technical track where there didn't used to be any. Argumentation, at least in the technical sense applied in A.I. must really be making some headway and gaining popularity. That said this wasn't the most widely attended session. Papers during this session included:

1. "A Characterisation of Strategy-Proofness for Grounded Argumentation Semantics" by Iyad Rahwan, Kate Larson, and Fernando Tohme.
2. "Repariing Preference-Based Argumentation Frameworks" by Leila Amgoud and Srdjan Vesic
3. "Argumentation System with Changes of an Agent's Knowledge Base" by Kenichi Okuno and Kazuko Takahashi
4. "On the Accrual of Arguments in Defeasible Logic Programming" by Mauro Javier Gomez Lucero, Carlos Chesnevar, and Guillermo Simari

I did not attend the conference banquet but did find a nice Italian restaurant that server a nice Veal shin with Risotto which was very tasty with a glass of Pinot Noir. The good food and drink cost me much less that the conference banquet would have. Although I didn't have the opportunity to geek out with the other delegates, afterwards I did find a great bar that server reasonably priced beer, had friendly bar staff, and had great entertainment. I spent the rest of the evening listening to Sarah Daye singing live in a bar in the Paseo Colorado. She has a great voice and sings a mixture of tracks that you have heard before and tracks that you haven't. I stayed until the very end and was pleased with my evenings entertainment.

Because Doug had another conference to travel to tomorrow I elected to spend the morning with him and his wife on a walking tour around Pasadena's Old Town area. This worked out quite well as Doug and I talked about research interests and identified a range of directions that we could look to for joint work, whilst his wife pointed out architectural features of the buildings that we shouldn't miss and made sure that we didn't get run over. In the afternoon I met with Helena Lindgren to talk about some plans for research based upon our shared interests in argumentation, automated defeasible reasoning, and healthcare computing. We decided that the best way to do this was to talk whilst we walked and traveled around so we hopped on the metro and headed over to Hollywood which gave us time to chat during the hour or so journey. After walking along Hollywood Boulevard and seeing Graumann's Chinese Theatre we spent several hours drinking coffee and working in a Starbucks. The culmination was about six firm directions for research topics related to our shared interests that we plan to pursue as time allows. These mostly involve topics that take my expertise in dialogue game protocols, particularly as a method for doing knowledge elicitation from human experts into computational argumentation models, and marry them to Helena's expertise in structuring healthcare oriented data according to argumentation schemes. We identified a number of interaction use cases where the correct dialogue protocols could add significantly new functionality to her existing system. By this time we were both a bit hungry so we ate Sashimi in a nearby Japanese restaurant before listening to a free Samba band playing in the mall against the background of the Hollywood sign. How much more California can you get? One of the nice things about California so far has been that most evenings, if you look hard enough, you can find decent, if not great music being played live for little or no cover fee. Maybe because so many talented people travel here the sheer depth of the pool of talent means that really good singers end up singing for free in local bars purely because they enjoy entertaining.

A couple of hours after CMNA 9 was the opening ceremony of the IJCAI conference so I had time to grab a quick shower before attending - another benefit of the conference hotel being so close to the conference venue. After the opening ceremony was the opening reception at Caltech Athenaeum which is a really pleasent environment. The exterior architecture is a spanish inspired courtyard villa and gardens whilst the interior reminds me a little of an old-fashioned Oxbridge style college club with a flash american twist. Everybody got a free drinks voucher so it was of course an easy choice for me, Vodka Martini - straight up with a twist - the way Valerie introduced me to them last week. Until now I had always been a bit traditional with my Martinis. After the reception buses took us all back to the Pasadena Conference Center where a group of us set off into the old town, about 5 minutes walk, to find a bar for a couple of drinks. Unfortunately we couldn't find anywhere playing live music so ended up in a quiet spanish-themed bar/restaurant on Colorado Boulevard.

As promised here are the slides from my Argument Blogging presentation at CMNA 9 in Pasadena, California.