La dimension culturelle dans la modélisation de l'usager

Jacqueline BourdeauLICEF, TELUQ, Québec, Canada

MATI, 4 octobre 2012Conférence-midi

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Tell Me Where You've Lived, And I'll Tell You What You Like: Adapting Interfaces to Cultural Preferences

Katharina Reinecke, Abraham Bernstein, University of Zurich, SwitzerlandUMAP 2009, Best Student Paper Award

My reflections:• UM is interested in culture• UM liked Hofstede’s framework• Culture is seen as an interface issue• Culture is related to preferences• Culture is geography-related

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And in ITS/AIED Research?

• CATS International Workshop on Culturally-Aware Tutoring Systems: 2008, 2009, 2010

• Blanchard, E. and Allard, D., Handbook of Research on Culturally-Aware Information Technology, 2010

• Cultural student modeling: not reporting a set of demographics, but to reconcile the multi-layered nature of cultural identity (Blanchard & Ogan, 2011); Model instead of profile or preferences

• Modeling in ITS: student (OLM) and domain; a tradition of cognitive computational models, deep semantics, conceptualization, knowledge representation, reasoning (Nkambou, Bourdeau & Mizoguchi, 2010)

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Studies on Cultural Issues In ITS Research

Allard Cultural interferences in L2 learning

Blanchard A Top ontology of cultureAbout WEIRDness in AIED/ITS research

Savard An ontology of cultural differences for instructional design

Wu Modelling cultural intelligence

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Plan

1. Culture: What’s in it? And what’s not?2. Why is it meaningful for User Modeling?3. A Layer or a Dimension?4. Towards an Ontology of Culture5. Cultural Diversity and Instructional Design6. Cultural Intelligence7. Culture and Adaptation8. Towards a Culturally Aware Web 3.0

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User A has R1, User B has R2, User C has R3 = 3

different representations for the same manifestation

(a strong man)!

Multiple Facets of Culture:Manifestations and Representations

M M

M

MR R

R

Manifestation???

Representation

User B: Adapts to

the system

User C: Lost!

User A: System

should adapt!

User D: No need to

adapt either one: she is

transculturally competent

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1. Culture: What’s in it?

• Definitions from the literature • Culture, context, and situation• Culture and language, communication• Individual and collective culture• Hofstede’s framework (theoretical)• Sperber’s naturalistic approach (theoretical)• Cultural intelligence: Ang & Earley (empirical)• CQ four-dimensional structure by Ang and Van

Dyne (empirical)

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Definitions from the Literature: A Construct

• Hofstede: The collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of a human group from another (1980)

• Sperber: An epidemiology of representations (1986, 1996)• UNESCO: The set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and

emotional features of society or a social group, [...] it encompasses, in addition to art and literature, lifestyles, ways of living together, value systems, traditions and beliefs (1982)

• Kroeber & Kluckhohn (1952), in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions, inventoried a list of over 200 different definitions for the word culture.

• Culture is social, not only geography-related• Culture is about sharing or not sharing, including the case of

rebels, hybrids and mutants• Culture is about meaning

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Hofstede’s Framework, 1980 • An anthropologist working on organizational culture (IBM etc);

descriptive/interpretative• “people carry mental programs that are developed in the family in

early childhood and reinforced in schools and organizations. These mental programs are of three levels: individual, collective and universal, and contain a component of national culture”

• Five dimensions: – individualism versus collectivism– masculinity versus femininity– power distance– uncertainty avoidance– short- and long-term orientation

• Advantages: clarity, parsimony, resonance with managers for cross-cultural management

• Manifestations: symbols, heroes, rituals, values (deepest) • Representations: mental

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Manifestations: Four levels

• Hofstede & Hofstede (2005) present the manifestations of culture at different depth levels, using four concepts: symbols, heroes, rituals and values.

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RitualsRitual2

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Criticism of Hofstede’s Framework

• Limitations: oversimplistic, ignores evolution of culture, ignores cultural diversity within a country

• Challenging the view of cultures as relatively stable systems in equilibrium

• Fundamental: interpretative, speculative• Methodological: overgeneralization• B.L. Kirkman, K.B. Lowe, C.B. Gibson, "A quarter century of culture’s

consequences: A review of empirical research incorporating Hofstede »s cultural values framework," Journal of International Business Studies, vol. 37, pp. 285-320, 2006 (a meta-analysis of 180 studies based on Hofstede’s Framework)

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Sperber’s Naturalistic Approach

• A materialist anthropologist trying to explain Culture as a phenomenon, its mechanics, the factors causing the phenomenon, with the metaphor of biology

• Approach: epidemiology of representations (causal chains), seeks for causality, reconceptualization

• Cultural macro-phenomena= cumulative effect of1) Individual mechanisms forming and transforming mental

representations2) Inter-individual mechanisms transmitting the representations

• A cultural fact is the combined effect of countless micro-mechanisms

• Adressed the issue of an Ontology of culture, 1986

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Scharifian’s Cultural Conceptualizations

• Cultural conceptualizations vs conceptualization of culture • Cultural schemas, cultural categories• Emerge from interactions between people, are continually

negotiated • Distributed among members of the group is more or less

coherent; not evenly distributed• Example: Australian aboriginals’ schemas for events, roles,

images, propositions• F. Scharifian, "On cultural conceptualizations," Journal of

Cognition and Culture, vol. 3(3), pp. 187-207, 2003• An ethnographist, Persian

Not everyone is W.E.I.R.D!

(Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic)

Most people are not WEIRD, Joseph Henrich, Steven J. Heine and Ara Norenzayan, Nature, Vol 466, 1 July 2010

On the WEIRD nature of ITS/AIED conferences: A 10 year longitudinal study analyzing potential cultural biases, Emmanuel G. Blanchard, ITS 2012

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Why is Culture meaningful for User Modeling?

• Adaptation=individual• Social web= group sharing something (cultural?)• Semantic web is about meaning• Culture a common feature among individuals in a

society-group vs in a social network• Cultural issues a source of problems and

misunderstandings in a globalizing world• User Experience (UX) is influenced by culture, and

vice versa

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Questioning

• Does socialization in social networks level cultural differences?

• Do we live a different life in the virtual than in the real world? Transcultural versus cultural?

• Are we aware of our culture/s? of being cultural in what we do, think?

• Cultural: bi-, multi-, inter-, cross-, transcultural• Emerging cultures, dependent or not on language (FB,

Tweeter)• What is not cultural? What is social that is not cultural?

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A Layer or a Dimension?

• Cultural features a layer between individual and social?

• Or a dimension that pervades life in the social web?

• Culture a prominent feature in human interactions? (Johnson & Valente, 2008)

• Cultural diversity in teams, networks, countries• Culture: an Ill-defined domain (Blanchard & al,

2010)

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Towards an Ontology of Culture

• Semantic issues with culture: entity or property? Culture or culturality?

• A top level ontology of culture (Blanchard & al)• An ontology of cultural interferences in human

communication (Allard & al)• An ontology of cultural differences for culturally-

aware instructional design (Savard & al)• Cultural Intelligence (Wu & al)• Small pieces of a masterpiece still to come…

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A Top Level Ontology Of Culture: Goals

1. To allow development teams to consider cultures in a scientifically-sound and cross-disciplinary way

2. To propose ways of appropriately computerizing cultural aspects of a given problem by suggesting templates for theory-driven data structures and data management processes

3. To promote interoperability by enforcing the consistency of cultural data modelling between systems, thus facilitating reuse of computerized cultural data

4. To promote cultural automatic reasoning, thus allowing systems to take culturally-informed decisions that may impact on their internal processing as well as on human-computer interaction (Blanchard & al, 2010)

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A Top Level Ontology Of Culture (Blanchard & al, 2010)

• An ontology: specification of a conceptualization• An ontology consists of a set of concepts, axioms, and

relationships that describe a domain of interest (SUOWG, 2009)

• The most possible abstract level of culture• Built upon a general top level ontology• In order to specify cultural components, events,

agents, with their properties within a semantic network

• Excerpt

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Lightweight and Heavyweight Ontologies

• Lightweight ontology: for web search engines, consists of a topic hierarchy with little consideration of rigorous definition of a concept, principle of concept organization, distinction between word and concept, etc. The main purpose of such a hierarchy is to power up the search engine and hence it is very use-dependent.

• Formal (heavyweight) ontology: developed with much attention paid to rigorous meaning of each concept, organizing principles developed in philosophy, semantically rigorous relations between concepts, etc. Instance models are usually built based on those ontologies to model a target world, which requires careful conceptualization of the world to guarantee of the consistency and fidelity of the model. (Mizoguchi, in Blanchard & al, 2010)

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Culture and Language (Allard & al)• Problem: Cultural interferences in human communication, in L2…Ln learning• Interference: Error due to transfer stemming from a native language (L1), or

another previously acquired language• Cultural knowledge: part of language learning• UNESCO’s objectives for intercultural education (2007) underline interaction

amongst and within groups of people: – To respect “the cultural identity of the learner through the provision of culturally

appropriate and responsive quality education for all”– To provide “every learner with the cultural knowledge, attitudes and skills necessary to

achieve active and full participation in society”– To provide “all learners with cultural knowledge, attitudes and skills that enable them

to contribute to respect, understanding and among individuals, ethnic, social, cultural and religious groups and nations”

• Objectives: – examine cultural variables that contribute to explain the existence and / or use of

certain language patterns, and also explain why students of a given cultural group face difficulty acquiring L2 patterns given the influence of L1, itself a reflection of certain cultural values.

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Cultural Diversity and Instructional Design (Savard)

• Problem: – in order to be reused, Learning Objects (LO) should be as

neutral as possible – However, students need anchors for learning to occur and LOs

must be presented in a context that is meaningful to them • Semantics: not only the LO (content) are referenced, but

also the learning scenarios (student-centered, multi-actor activities), in terms of cultural aspects

• Not only for learners, but also for instructional designers to search, adapt, share and reuse

• Scenarios are specifications of learning/techning activities using learning objects

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The Life Cycle of Culture (Savard)Adapting to a culture: Adapt manifestations AND representations

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Savard’s Objectives• A ‘’cultural diversity’’ knowledge

base exploitable by a system designed to help instructional designers in their design tasks

• A method to process cultural variables that can be implemented into an instructional design process

• An agent to integrate cultural awareness in the instructional design process

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Cultural Intelligence (Wu)

• A kind of Intelligence (intellectual, affective, social..)• Definition: The ability to collect and to process

information, to form judgments, and to implement effective measures in order to adapt to a new cultural context

• Measuring IQ• Modelling IQ• Reasoning about IQ• Applications: training, expat, decision-making…

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Cultural Quotient (Wu)

• Cultural quotient is – the level of success people obtain when adapting to

another culture (Thomas) – the ability to interact efficiently with people who are

culturally different (Ng et al.)– the ability to be effective in all cultures (Johnson et al.) – the ability of an individual to integrate a set of

knowledge, skills and personal qualities so as to work successfully with people from different cultures and countries, both at home and abroad (Wu et al, 2012)

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Modelling CI & CQ (Wu)

• Ang and Van Dyne:– four-dimensional CQ structure– based on the general intelligence structure of Sternberg and

Detterman – divides CQ into metacognitive , cognitive , motivational and

behavioral CQ• Wu:

– the four CQ dimensions are interdependent entities– a computational model with an inference engine (hybrid neuro-

fuzzy soft-computing technique)– The smart CIES system interacting with users– Needed: big data!

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Culture and Adaptation

• Taking culture into account to adapt• Taking cultural intelligence into account to

adapt• Culture is deep! Complex! Pervasive!

Evolutionary! Ill-defined!• What is not cultural?• Towards a Culturally Aware Web 3.0

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Lan

Onto of educationOMNIBUS Cultural

intelligence

Onto of culture+KB

CIES Cultural

Intelligence Expert System

SMARTIESscenario builder

Towards a Culturally Aware Web 3.0

Top level ontology

LanguageCultural

interferences

ITS?L2L-ITS?

Instru

Semantic, Adaptive, Context aware

Semantic, adaptive, culturally aware

Adaptive, Culturally aware

Elearning design

Semantic Web, adaptive, culturally aware

INDEED Cultural

agent

ITCICCICI-ITS?

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References• Allard, D., Bourdeau, J. and Mizoguchi, R. (2011). Addressing L1 Interference and Related Cultural Factors

Using Technology, CALICO Journal, Vol 28, No. 3. • Allard, D., Bourdeau, J. and Mizoguchi, R. (2010). Addressing and Modeling Knowledge of Cross-Linguistic

Influence and Related Cultural Factors Using Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL), in Blanchard, E. et Allard, D., Handbook of Research on Culturally-Aware Information Technology: Perspectives and Models, IGI-Global, pp. 582-598.

• Ang S. and Van Dyne, L. (2008). Handbook of Cultural Intelligence. 1st ed. M.E. Sharpe.Armonk.• Blanchard, E. G., Mizoguchi, R., Lajoie, S. P. (2010). Structuring the Cultural Domain with an Upper Ontology

of Culture. In E.G. Blanchard and D. Allard (Eds), Handbook of Research on Culturally Aware Information Technology: Perspectives and Models, Hershey, PA: Information Science Publishing.

• Blanchard E. and Ogan, A. (2011)…. Advances in Intelligent Tutoring Systems. Heidelberg: Springer Verlag, Studies in Computational Intelligence, Volume 308

• Blanchard E. (2012). On the WEIRD nature of ITS/AIED conferences: A 10 year longitudinal study analyzing potential cultural biases, Proc. of the ITS Conference, 2012.

• Bourdeau, J. et Grandbastien, M. (2010). Modeling Tutoring Knowledge, in Nkambou, R., Bourdeau, J. et Mizoguchi, R. (Eds.), (2010). Advances in Intelligent Tutoring Systems. Heidelberg: Springer Verlag, Studies in Computational Intelligence, Volume 308, pp. 123-144.

• Earley P.C., Ang, S.: Cultural intelligence: Individual interactions across cultures. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003.

• Henrich, J., Heine, S. and Norenzayan, A. (2010). Most people are not WEIRD, Nature, Vol 466/1, July.• Hofstede, G. (1980). Culture’s consequences: International differences in work relatedvalues. Beverly Hills, ‐

CA: Sage.• Hofstede, G., and Hofstede, J.G. (2005). Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind (2nd Edition ).

New-York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

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References, cont’d• Johnson, L. and Valente (2008). Tactical Language and Culture Training Systems: Using Artificial Intelligence to

Teach Foreign Languages and Cultures, In Proceedings of IAAI 2008. • Kirkman, B.L., Lowe, K.B., and Gibson, C.B. (2006). A quarter century of culture‟s consequences: A review of

empirical research incorporating Hofstede‟s cultural values framework, Journal of International Business Studies, vol. 37, pp. 285-320.

• Mizoguchi, R. , Hayashi, Y. et Bourdeau, J. (2010). Ontology-Based Formal Modeling of the Pedagogical World: Tutor Modeling, in Nkambou, R., Bourdeau, J. and Mizoguchi, R. (Eds.), (2010). Advances in Intelligent Tutoring Systems. Heidelberg: Springer Verlag, Studies in Computational Intelligence, Volume 308, pp. 229-248.

• Nkambou, R., Bourdeau, J. and Mizoguchi, R. (Eds.), (2010). Advances in Intelligent Tutoring Systems. Heidelberg: Springer Verlag, Studies in Computational Intelligence, Volume 308.

• Reinecke, K., Bernstein, A. (2009). Tell Me Where You've Lived, And I'll Tell You What You Like: Adapting Interfaces to Cultural Preferences, UMAP 2009, Best student paper award.

• Savard, Bourdeau & Paquette, ITS 2008• Scharifian, F. (2003). "On cultural conceptualizations," Journal of Cognition and Culture, vol. 3(3), pp. 187-207. • Sperber, D., Explaining culture: A naturalistic approach, Oxford: Blackwell, 1996. • SUOWG. (2009). IEEE Standard Upper Ontology Working Group. Retrieved from http://suo.ieee.org• Tremblay, O.(2009) Une ontologie des savoirs lexicologiques pour l' élaboration d'un module de cours en

didactique du lexique. Unpublished dissertation, Université de Montréal.• Wu, Z., Nkambou, R. and Bourdeau, J. (2012). Cultural Intelligence Decision Support System for Business

Activities, accepted paper for the BUSTECH 2012 Conference, Nice, France.• Wu, Z., Nkambou, R. and Bourdeau, J. (2012). The Application of AI to Cultural Intelligence, in Proc. of ICAI

2012, The International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Las Vegas, USA.