Qatar Foundation Annual Research Forum Volume 2013 Issue 1

This work focuses on developing a contextual spellchecker to improve the correctness of input queries to a multi-lingual, cross-cultural robot receptionist system. Queries that have fewer misspellings will improve the robot's ability to answer them and in turn improve the effectiveness of the human-robot interaction. We focus on developing an n-gram model based contextual spell-checker to correct misspellings and increase the query-hit rate of the robot. Our test bed is a bi-lingual, cross-cultural robot receptionist, Hala, deployed at the Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar's reception area. Hala can accept typed input queries in Arabic and English and speak responses in both languages as she interacts with users. All input queries to Hala are logged. These logs allow the study of multi-lingual aspects, the influence of socio-cultural norms and the nature of human-robot interaction within a multicultural, yet primarily ethnic Arab, setting. A recent statistical analysis has shown that 26.3% of Hala's queries are missed. The missed queries are due to either Hala not having the required answer in the knowledge base or due to misspellings. We have measured that 50% are due to misspellings. We designed, developed and assessed a custom spellchecker based on an n-gram model. We focused our efforts on a spellchecker for the English mode of Hala. We trained our system on our existing language corpus consisting of valid input queries making the spellchecker more specific to Hala. Finally, we adjusted the n in the n-gram model and evaluated the correctness of the spellchecker in the context of Hala. Our system makes use of the Hunspell, which is an engine that uses algorithm based on n-gram similarity, rule and dictionary based pronunciation data and morphological analysis. Misspelled words are passed through the Hunspell spellchecker and the output is a list of possible words. Utilizing the list of words, we apply our n-gram model algorithm to find which word is best suited in a particular context. The model calculates the conditional probability P(w|s) of a word w given the previous sequence of words s, that is, predicting the next word based on the preceding n-1 words. To assess the effectiveness of our system, we evaluate it using 5 different cases of misspelled word location. The table below lists our results, correct indicates when the sentence is correctly spellchecked and incorrect when the sentences did not change after passing through the spellchecker, or the sentences included transliterated Arabic, or were incorrectly spellchecked which resulted in loss of semantics. Refer to table. We observed that context makes the spellchecking of a sentence more sensible resulting in a higher hit rate in Hala's knowledge base. For case 5, despite having more context than the previous cases, the hit rate is lower. This is because other sources of errors were introduced such as user making use of SMS languages or mixture of English and Arabic. In our future work we would like to tackle the above-mentioned problems and also work on a Part-of-Speech tagging system that would help in correcting real-word mistakes.

Abstract This study began focused on the use of traditional knowledge in promoting sustainable development in crisis conditions. Presented the question: How have successful community- level sustainable development efforts undertaken under crisis conditions drawn upon indigenous knowledge to achieve positive outcomes? The study is a cross case analysis. The three cases addressed in this study have explained some of the ways that indigenous knowledge has played significant positive roles in promoting sustainable development for communities living under crisis conditions in Palestine. Indigenous knowledge community based patterns indicated significant focus on strengths of local culture, social cohesion, the integration process, and special advantages for policy implementation from the community level as key components of sustainable development in crisis conditions. This study especially focuses on efforts to implement sustainable development in crisis conditions. As the World Commission on Environment and Development, better known as the Brundtland Commission, explained in its seminal report (1987), the core problem for sustainable development is the need to integrate social development, economic development, and environmental protection to ensure “development that meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their own needs” (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987, p. 8). And as that report and subsequent studies indicate, too often the social development dimension of the living triangle has been ignored or dramatically undervalued as those involved in development have concentrated on economic development and to some extent environmental protection (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987). In addition to the important ongoing problem of lack of focus on social aspects, sustainable development is particularly important and especially challenging in crisis conditions that include war, terrorism, and civil disorder and their aftermath. This research specifically considers the challenges of sustainable development in the Palestinian context with sensitivity to the need for the integration of all three elements of the living triangle and with concern for the special challenges presented by efforts to achieve sustainable development in crisis conditions. The study contributes to theory by analyzing common elements from the case studies and providing a set of testable propositions, grounded in those successful experiences that can be a starting point for building theory. Practically, the study has generated lessons that sustainable development policy implementers and decision makers can learn from when addressing sustainable development in different crisis conditions contexts such as the aftermath of what is called the “Arab Spring” contexts.

Qatar's rich Arabic heritage is not only captured in its buildings, artworks and stories, but also in the living memory of its people. Historians and ethnographers work to capture these stories by interviewing people in “oral history” projects, typically one by one. This is, naturally, a slow process, which can only record selected highlights of a people's rich memory. We here introduce a digital infrastructure that enables crowd-sourcing and distribution of Qatar's oral history. The goal is to inspire people to actively participate in shaping their country's historic record. People in Qatar as well as those living overseas will be stimulated to participate, thus weaving a rich heritage tapestry available electronically to Qataris and tourists alike. Each user will have our software installed as an app on their smartphone. While they are moving though their environs, users are prompted to create audio recording using our app. As in an interview with an ethnographer, they are guided through a set of questions, one at a time. The person acting as the Oral Historian creates the dynamically configurable script of questions and further defines time limits for each answer. If a response is brief, the app prompts for more detail, if a response is overly lengthy, the app prompts for closure on that question. Our software automatically captures some basic metadata: the time, GPS location, and length of the recording. It can further prompt for semi-structured metadata from its user, such as descriptions of their surroundings and the period to which the recording refers. Users are also prompted to upload any photos, documents, or videos that might relate to their audio contribution. At the end of a recording, a user is asked if they wish to provide personal data, e.g., name and age. The system does not automatically use registration account details as a user might be accompanied by another person who contributes to the oral history recording. These captured oral histories are grouped into collections and curated by an Oral Historian to prevent misuse and ensure quality. They may additionally decide to periodically publish a new set of questions to the registered users, for example to enrich particular topic areas in the collection. The end user software is available as a smartphone app, whereas the interface for the historian is server-based for ease of use. The underlying infrastructure uses the Open Source digital library system Greenstone, which has a pedigree of two decades (www.greenstone.org). It is sponsored by UNESCO as part of its "Information for All" programme, and its user interface has been translated into over 50 languages. Recent developments enable mobile phone operation and multimedia content. Greenstone therefore provides an ideal platform to deliver this integrated, mobile infrastructure for crowd-sourcing oral history information. The captured oral histories and any accompanying multimedia artefacts are sent to a central library where Greenstone's content management tools are available to the curating Oral Historian. The items are thus integrated into an evolving, public collection that are available to mobile and web users alike.

Language and culture are bound together. In Arabic, courtesy expressions play an important role. Consequently, a learner should be aware of them in order to fully master the Arabic language. The current research studies the compliment responses in Colloquial Arabic and their use when teaching Arabic as a foreign language. The speech act of complimenting was chosen because of the important role it plays in human communication. Compliments strengthen solidarity between the speakers and are an explicit reflection of cultural values. The first part of the study was a comparative ethnographic study on compliment responses in peninsular Spanish and in Lebanese Arabic. 72 selected members of a Lebanese and a Spanish social network participated in the research. The independent variables were: origin, age and gender. In both social networks, parallel communicative situations were created. The participants were linked by kinship or friendship and paid a compliment on the same topic. Secret recordings were used in order to register these communicative interactions and create a corpus formed with natural conversations. Compliment response sequences were analysed following a taxonomy created by the researcher for the specific study of the Spanish and Lebanese corpora. In the Lebanese corpus, formulaic expressions and invocations against the 'evil eye' were used. In Arabic and Islamic societies, it is believed that a compliment could attract the 'evil eye' if it is not accompanied by expressions invoking God's protection. In the Spanish corpus, both long and detailed explanations were frequently used. In the second part of the research, a corpus of courtesy expressions in colloquial Arabic is being built. The corpus of the current research could serve for future studies in the field of Arabic dialectology and sociolinguistics as it is the first one to include all the different Arabic dialects. The researcher will study the relationship between language and culture in Arabic societies. Participants of the second part of research are female Arab University students with an advance proficiency level of English and French. The independent variable is origin. Muted videos are the instrument to collect the data for this study. Three different videos for compliments about physical appearance, belongings and skills were recorded in Beirut and Bahrain. Students are requested to recreate the dialogue between the characters in Colloquial Arabic. The compliment response sequence is collected through this instrument because it enhances the students' creative freedom. The objectives of the study are: - Building a corpus of courtesy expressions in colloquial Arabic and conducting a comparative analysis of the formulaic responses to compliments in all Arabic dialects. - Studying if courtesy expressions are included in textbooks for teaching Arabic as a foreign language and if they are currently taught in Institutions and Universities. The results of the present research have some pedagogical implications. Courtesy expressions in spoken Arabic are essential and therefore should be introduced in the language classroom through real language examples. Developing the pragmatic competence plays an important role in teaching foreign languages and it helps Arabic learners to become intercultural speakers.

This presentation provides systematic evidence on an emergent debate about a Muslim woman's dress and her perceived credibility as a witness in a court context. The objective of this research is to understand how Muslim women's dress impacts their perceived credibility. The issue of testifying in western courts while wearing either a head veil (hijab) or a face veil (niqab) has been strongly contested on the grounds that physically seeing the witness's face helps observers judge her credibility (e.g., R. v. N.S., 2010). Canada's Supreme Court (N.S. v. Her Majesty the Queen, et al., 2012) ruled that judges will disallow the niqab "whenever the effect of wearing it would impede an evaluation of the witness's credibility." In 2010, an Australian judge ruled that a Muslim woman must remove her full veil while giving evidence before a jury. In 2007, the UK guidance on victims also indicated that the niqab may affect the quality of evidence given in the court room. All of those decisions and opinions run contrary to systematic research. Psychological studies suggest that nonverbal cues are not only poor indicators of veracity, but that they are the least useful indicators of deception (e.g., DePaulo et al., 2003, Vrij, 2008). This presentation discusses results of a research project that examined Muslim women's credibility. Using a quasi-experimental design, three groups of Muslim women lied or told the truth while testifying about a mock crime: 1) women without any coverings (safirat), 2) women wearing hijab (muhjabat) and 3) women wearing niqab (munaqabat). Videos of these women were then shown to audiences who assessed the credibilityof the witnesses. The research further explored the witness's general perceptions of being an eyewitness within the court system, and to what extent (if any) their dress impacted their perceptions. The presentation fits within the Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities thematic pillar of Qatar's National Research Strategy. It more particularly fits within two of the grand challenges: Managing Transition to a Diversified Knowledge- based Society: Build a knowledge-based society by emphasizing a robust research culture, and Holistic and Systematic Assessment of the Rapidly Changing Environment: Foster motivation, scholarship, and prosperity among Qatari nationals and expatriates along with cultural accommodations that are in-sync with modern practice.

Geolocated video represents an opportunity for innovation in journalism and media. Reported here are the results of a proof-of-concept research project demonstrating and assessing the process of creating geolocated video in journalism and media. Geolocated refers to tagging video or other media content with geographic location information, usually obtained from GPS data. Geolocation is a growing feature of news and media content. It is being used increasingly in photographs and social media, including Twitter posts. Geolocation in video is a relatively new application. Employing a proof-of-concept method, this project demonstrates how geolocated video (using Kinomap technology) serves several purposes in news and media (see Figure 1). First, geolocation allows the content to be automatically uploaded to Google Earth or other mapping software available online. This enables others anywhere to access that content by location. It is an aspect of Big Data, in that it permits mapping or other analysis of geolocated content. Such analysis can reveal a variety of insights about the production of media content. Second, geolocation, in concert with other digital watermarking, provides a useful tool to authenticate video. Geolocation in a digital watermark is a valuable tool to help establish the veracity of video or other content. Geolocation can help document when and where video produced by users or freelancers or even professionally employed reporters covering a sensitive story was captured. Reporters (or lay-citizens) providing smartphone video of an event can use geolocation to help establish time, date and location. Third, geolocation supports freelance media practitioners in protecting copyright or intellectual property rights by helping provide a strong digital watermark that includes their identity and the precise time, date and location the video was captured. Fourth, geolocated video represents an opportunity for a new approach to storytelling including in digital maps. Geolocated videos have been produced and made available on Google Earth. Viewing can occur immersively with mobile or wearable devices (e.g., augmented reality, Google Glass). This project aligns with three of the Qatar Research Grand Challenges. First, it supports Culture, Arts, Heritage, Media and Language within the Arabic Context, providing a medium to foster investment in the nation's legacy in Arabic arts, design, architecture, and cultural programs. Second, it supports Holistic and Systematic Assessment of the Rapidly Changing Environment, exploring the roles of communication (e.g., education, journalism, traditional and social media channels) in fostering awareness of social issues. Third, it supports Sustainable Urbanization-Doha as a smart city, demonstrating a state-of-the-art communications technology especially effective and efficient in facilitating location-based communications challenges and needs.

This presentation draws on data from a four-year longitudinal study of undergraduate literacy development at an English-medium university in Qatar. While previous studies have documented literacy development at the primary and secondary school levels (Christie & Derewianka, 2010, Coffin, 2006) and much has been researched about the nature of writing genres at the graduate and professional levels (Hyland, 2009, Swales, 1990, 2004), there is a limited body of research on writing at the undergraduate level (Ravelli & Ellis, 2005). The limited work at this level has been either largely qualitative (Leki, 2007, Sternglass, 1997) or primarily text-based (Byrnes, 2010, Colombi, 2002, Nessi, 2009, 2011, North, 2005, Woodward-Kron, 2002, 2005, 2008). Recently, drawing on systemic functional linguistics (SFL) and genre pedagogy, the work of Dreyfus (2013), and Humphrey and Hao (2013) has begun to shed light on the nature of disciplinary writing and writing development at the undergraduate level. However, there is much to learn about the nature of undergraduate writing. This study aims to contribute to this area by examining faculty expectations, student trajectories, and development from a text-based and ethnographic approach. This presentation reports on different trajectories of academic literacy development by presenting four case studies of multilingual students at an English-medium university in the Middle East. While there have been several studies that have looked at the developmental literacy trajectories of undergraduate students (Leki, 2007, Sternglass, 1997, Zamel, 2004) using case studies, they have not closely and systematically examined writing development from a text-based approach. This paper aims to contribute to the growing interest in understanding the nature of undergraduate writing, especially among multilingual students, by using detailed case studies and analysis of student writing longitudinally. The presenters will describe the college experiences of four students and present longitudinal analysis of their writing over four years in the disciplines of business administration and information systems. The findings suggest that students enter the university with differing pre-college experiences that shape their college experiences and impact their rate of development. While personal, social, and academic development is documented in all cases, there are differences between those who came in with a strong academic background in English and those that had limited experiences with English academic reading and writing. Using the tools of Systemic Functional Linguistics (Halliday, 1984), the text analysis of student writing shows development as their writing progressively becomes more academic (with increasing use of nominalizations and abstractions), analytical (with increasing use of evaluations), and better organized, with differences among the four case studies. Overall, the findings suggest that while weaker students do improve their literacy skills while in college, many still graduate with inconsistencies and infelicities in their writing. Documenting the literacy development of university students in Qatar is pivotal as Qatar continues to invest in English-medium education to build its human capital. This project aims to generate insights for curricular planning and assessment in Qatar and a basis for research on academic literacy development that will be of interest to scholars internationally.

Universal surveys—such as the World Values Survey—seek to promote generalizability across contexts. But what if two different cultures interpret and respond to a general question in two different ways (e.g., King et al. 2004)? Using this methodological conundrum as a starting point, over the past year I have a led a research team of four faculty and twelve students—drawn from Northwestern University in Qatar, Qatar University, and Georgetown University in Qatar—in creating, translating, and analyzing a context-sensitive survey of the Qatari population, funded through a Qatar National Research Fund UREP (Undergraduate Research Experience Program) grant. The survey was conducted by Qatar University's Social and Economic Survey Research Institute (SESRI) from January 15 to February 3 for a total of 798 Qatari respondents, making it a professional and valuable addition to the literature. Further, we were able to insert many questions that had never previously been asked of the population, including ones spanning the relative importance of tradition versus modern symbolism, specific opinions on the national education reforms, personal versus state priorities, satisfaction with particular welfare benefits offered by the state, and measures of religiosity. Both the process of creating a contextualized survey for the Qatari population—including what could and could not be asked, and how sensitive concepts were translated—as well as the fascinating results, which have opened up new avenues of research into the sociopolitical transformations of the Qatari people, are well worth presenting to the community and receiving feedback. Even more importantly, the insights gained from how we contextualized the survey can be applied to improve the current state of social science survey research in Qatar. The explosion of survey research in Qatar—pioneered by the Qatar Statistics Authority and Qatar University's SESRI, and recently joined by the multinational surveys of the World Values Survey, Harris Polling, Zogby's, and the Arab Barometer—demonstrates the need for questions that are contextually and culturally sensitive and ensure full understanding of the Qatari population. The ability to present my work to the Qatar Foundation Annual Research Conference will provide valuable feedback and networking opportunities with likeminded professionals, researchers, and community members in my quest to continue this collaborate and important research effort. Citation: King, Gary, Christopher Murray, Joshua Salomon, and Ajay Tandon. 2004. “Enhancing the Validity and Cross-Cultural Comparability of Measurement in Survey Research.” American Political Science Review 98 (1): 191-207.

The Qatar National Vision aims at “transforming Qatar into an advanced country by 2030, capable of sustaining its own development and providing for a high standard of living for all of its people for generations to come”. The grand challenge of Human Capacity Development aims to develop sustainable talent for Qatar's knowledge economy in order to meet the needs for a high-quality workforce. In order for Qatar to achieve its 2030 National Vision and become an advanced country by 2030, it has to train its citizens to function in a globalized and competitive world. Important skills for Qatari to function in the 21st century are communication and use of emerging technologies skills. This presentation will propose a training model to develop the Qatar workforce for the 21st century using emerging learning technologies. The training model was based on a mobile learning research project funded by the Qatar Foundation through the Qatar National Research Fund. The project is a collaborative research project with Qatar University, Qatar Petroleum, Qatar Wireless Innovation Centre, and Athabasca University, Canada. The project developed and implemented training lessons on Communication Skills for the oil and gas industry using mobile technology to deliver the training. The workers were employed at Qatar Petroleum and completed the training as part of their professional development to improve their English communication skills. Results from the project showed that workers performance improved after they completed the training and they reported that use of mobile technology to deliver the training provides flexibility for learning on the job. They suggested that the training should be more interactive and game-like. This is important since today's young workers are comfortable using mobile technologies and they need to be motivated to learn using the mobile technologies. The proposed Qatar National Training Model (QNTM) (Figure 1) is based on the mobile learning research project funded by the Qatar Foundation through the Qatar National Research Fund. In the QNTM, the learner/trainee/worker is at the center of the learning since the goal of training is to provide the knowledge and skills to improve workers' performance on the job. The design of the training must follow good learning design principles including preparing the learner for the training, providing activities for the learners to complete to improve their knowledge and skills, allowing learners to practice to improve their performance, certifying learners based on their performance, and providing opportunities for learners to transfer what they learn to the job environment. The delivery of the training should be flexible using a blended approach that includes face-to-face, hands-on, E-learning, mobile learning, and online learning. A variety of learning strategies such as practice with feedback, tutorials, simulations, games, and problem solving can be used depending on the learning outcomes to be achieved. The proposed Qatar National Training Model will allow for learner-centered training, lifelong learning, just-in-time learning, learning in context, developing skills required for 21st century learning, and interaction between learners and between learners and the trainer using social media.