PAPER VS. SLIDES: DO THEY HAVE SIMILAR TEXTUAL TRAITS? Cover Image

PAPER VS. SLIDES: DO THEY HAVE SIMILAR TEXTUAL TRAITS?
PAPER VS. SLIDES: DO THEY HAVE SIMILAR TEXTUAL TRAITS?

Author(s): Ştefan Trăuşan-Matu, Lucia Larise Stavarache, Philippe DESSUS, Mihai Dascălu
Subject(s): Social Sciences
Published by: Carol I National Defence University Publishing House
Keywords: textual complexity model; MOOC; comparative traits; discourse analysis;

Summary/Abstract: As different learning methods and educational scenarios highly influence the corresponding outcomes, our aim is to highlight quantifiable discrepancies in terms of the complexity gap between presentations and hand-outs versus full documents (i.e. academic papers), expressed as concrete factors that directly influence the perceived difficulty. Although there are multiple dependant variables that affect the interpretation of a given topic (e.g., order of presented materials, difference in personal styles if materials originate from multiple authors), we limit the scope of our analysis to solely identifying textual traits that can be automatically extracted from conference papers and their corresponding slide presentations. Our approach represents the starting point for adapting MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) materials to their target audience in terms of: textual complexity, learner comprehension and content reusability. Therefore, this study performs a detailed comparison using a wide variety of textual complexity metrics as background, ranging from surface, syntactic, morphological and semantic factors in order to grasp the specificities of each material. In other words, our goal consists of providing a set of required metrics for adapting learning materials in order to best suit the underlying educational activities. Preliminary results reflect a strong correlation between the two alternative presentation forms of the same material (papers and corresponding slides) and a similar degree of perceived textual complexity, emphasizing the strong and unitary writing characteristics of the author.

  • Issue Year: 10/2014
  • Issue No: 01
  • Page Range: 187-192
  • Page Count: 6
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