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<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center;
line-height:11.0pt'><font size=2 color=black face="Trebuchet MS"><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Trebuchet MS";color:black'>CALL FOR PAPERS<br>
<br>
<strong><b><font face="Trebuchet MS"><span style='font-family:"Trebuchet MS"'>Workshop
on the Question Generation Task and Evaluation Challenge</span></font></b></strong><br>
Sponsored by National Science Foundation<br>
<br>
September 25-26, 2008<br>
National Science Foundation, <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Arlington</st1:City>,
<st1:State w:st="on">VA</st1:State></st1:place><br>
<a href="http://www.questiongeneration.org/">www.questiongeneration.org</a> <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><strong><b><font size=2 color=navy face="Trebuchet MS"><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Trebuchet MS";color:navy'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></b></strong></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><strong><b><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></b></strong></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><strong><b><font size=2 color=black face="Trebuchet MS"><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Trebuchet MS";color:black'>Goal</span></font></b></strong><font
size=2 color=black face="Trebuchet MS"><span style='font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:"Trebuchet MS";color:black'><br>
<br>
The natural language generation community has recently identified shared task
evaluation campaigns as a potential avenue to provide a focus of research in
natural language generation and to increase the visibility of natural language
generation in the wider natural language processing/computational linguistics
community.<br>
<br>
We would like to contribute to this effort by first properly defining and then
offering a shared task on Question Generation. As a first approximation, we
define Question Generation as the automatic generation of questions (Factual
questions, Yes/No-questions, Why-questions, etc.) from inputs such as text (in
particular, declarative sentences), raw data, and knowledge bases. The role of
this workshop is to reach a community consensus with respect to the Question
Generation shared task. The discussions will be guided by the Desiderata for
Evaluation of Natural Language Generation (Paris et al., 2007 in Shared Tasks
and Comparative Evaluation in Natural Language Generation: Workshop Report, Michael
White and Robert Dale, Eds.) outlined at the NSF/SIGGEN Workshop on Shared
Tasks and Comparative Evaluation in Natural Language Generation in 2007.<br>
<br>
Question Generation is an essential component of learning environments, help
systems, information seeking systems, multi-modal conversations between virtual
agents, and a myriad of other applications. However, systematic research on
Question Generation has been conspicuously absent in the computational
linguistics community at large and in the natural language generation community
in particular, in spite of substantial attention to the complementary question
answering processes. The time is ripe to address the important topic of
automated Question Generation.<br>
<br>
We invite submissions of short papers (2 pages including references) that
address topics relevant to Question Generation as a shared task, as provided
below:<br>
<br>
-cognitive and computational models of Question Generation that could inform
the definition of Question Generation shared task(s)</span></font><font size=2
color=navy face="Trebuchet MS"><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Trebuchet MS";
color:navy'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=black face="Trebuchet MS"><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Trebuchet MS";color:black'>-question taxonomies</span></font><font
size=2 color=navy face="Trebuchet MS"><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:
"Trebuchet MS";color:navy'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=black face="Trebuchet MS"><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Trebuchet MS";color:black'>-Question
Generation main task(s)</span></font><font size=2 color=navy face="Trebuchet MS"><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Trebuchet MS";color:navy'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=black face="Trebuchet MS"><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Trebuchet MS";color:black'>-Question
Generation sub-task(s)</span></font><font size=2 color=navy face="Trebuchet MS"><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Trebuchet MS";color:navy'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=black face="Trebuchet MS"><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Trebuchet MS";color:black'>-data
collection and preparation</span></font><font size=2 color=navy
face="Trebuchet MS"><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Trebuchet MS";
color:navy'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=black face="Trebuchet MS"><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Trebuchet MS";color:black'>-representation
language(s) for the input and output data</span></font><font size=2 color=navy
face="Trebuchet MS"><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Trebuchet MS";
color:navy'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=black face="Trebuchet MS"><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Trebuchet MS";color:black'>-annotation
schemes and processes</span></font><font size=2 color=navy face="Trebuchet MS"><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Trebuchet MS";color:navy'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=black face="Trebuchet MS"><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Trebuchet MS";color:black'>-forms of
evaluation (human-based vs. automatic vs. semi-automatic)</span></font><font
size=2 color=navy face="Trebuchet MS"><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:
"Trebuchet MS";color:navy'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=black face="Trebuchet MS"><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Trebuchet MS";color:black'>-evaluation
metrics</span></font><font size=2 color=navy face="Trebuchet MS"><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Trebuchet MS";color:navy'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=black face="Trebuchet MS"><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Trebuchet MS";color:black'>-others<br>
<br>
</span></font><font size=2 color=navy face="Trebuchet MS"><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Trebuchet MS";color:navy'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face="Trebuchet MS"><span style='font-size:
11.0pt;font-family:"Trebuchet MS"'>Limited travel support is available for
qualified participants. If you would like to apply for travel support please
send an email to Vasile Rus (<a href="mailto:vrus@memphis.edu"><font
color=black><span style='color:windowtext'>vrus@memphis.edu</span></font></a>)
as soon as possible.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=black face="Trebuchet MS"><span
style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Trebuchet MS";color:black'><br>
Submission Guidelines<br>
<br>
Papers should follow the ACL paper format and should not exceed 2 pages
including references. Templates are available at <a
href="http://www.ling.ohio-state.edu/acl08/stylefiles.html">http://www.ling.ohio-state.edu/acl08/stylefiles.html</a>.
Submissions should include information about authors (no anonymous
submissions). Papers must be submitted via email to <a
href="mailto:vrus@memphis.edu">vrus@memphis.edu</a> before or on the submission
deadline (see next). The papers must be submitted in PDF format. <br>
<br>
Important Dates<br>
<br>
Submission Deadline: August 1, 2008<br>
Notification Deadline: August 15, 2008<br>
Camera-Ready Papers Due: September 1, 2008<br>
<br>
Organizing Committee<br>
<br>
Workshop Co-chairs:<br>
<br>
Vasile Rus, The <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:PlaceType w:st="on">University</st1:PlaceType>
of <st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Memphis</st1:PlaceName></st1:place><br>
Art Graesser, The <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:PlaceType w:st="on">University</st1:PlaceType>
of <st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Memphis</st1:PlaceName></st1:place><br>
<br>
Steering Committee:<br>
<br>
James Lester, <st1:PlaceName w:st="on">North Carolina</st1:PlaceName> <st1:PlaceType
w:st="on">State</st1:PlaceType> <st1:PlaceType w:st="on">University</st1:PlaceType>
<br>
Jose Otero, <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:PlaceType w:st="on">University</st1:PlaceType>
of <st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Alcala</st1:PlaceName></st1:place><br>
Paul Piwek, Open University<br>
Amanda Stent, Stony Brook University</span></font><font color=navy face=Arial><span
style='font-family:Arial;color:navy'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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