1,721,352 research outputs found
Developing Enjoyable Second Language Learning Software Tools: a computing game paradigm
No full textThis chapter attempts to examine computer game theories — ludology and narratology— that explain computer games as play activities and storytelling media. Founded onthis theoretical explanation, a game model that incorporates gameplay and narrativesis presented. From the model, two aspects of learning in the game environment areidentified: gameplay-oriented and narrative-oriented. It is believed that playingcomputer games involves at least one of these types of learning; thus, this game’s naturecan be used in designing engaging educational software. In addition, based onMalone’s theoretical framework on motivational heuristics, there are two methods ofapplying computer games in language learning: extrinsic and intrinsic, depending onthe integration of game designs and learning materials. Then, two cases of language-learning games are scrutinized, using the game model, in order to demonstrate the useof computer games in language learning
Analyzing the factors influencing the successful design and uptake of interactive systems to support social networks in urban neighborhoods
No full textIn urban residential environments in Australia and other developed countries, Internet access is on the verge of becoming a ubiquitous utility like gas or electricity. From an urban sociology and community informatics perspective, this article discusses new emerging social formations of urban residents that are based on networked individualism and the potential of Internet-based systems to support them. It proposes that one of the main reasons for the disappearance or nonexistence of urban residential communities is a lack of appropriate opportunities and instruments to encourage and support local interaction in urban neighborhoods. The article challenges the view that a mere reappropriation of applications used to support dispersed virtual communities is adequate to meet the place and proximity-based design requirements that community networks in urban neighborhoods pose. It argues that the key factors influencing the successful design and uptake of interactive systems to support social networks in urban neighborhoods include the swarming social behavior of urban dwellers; the dynamics of their existing communicative ecology; and the serendipitous, voluntary, and place-based quality of interaction between residents on the basis of choice, like-mindedness, mutual interest and support needs. Drawing on an analysis of these factors, the conceptual design framework of a prototype system — the urban tribe incubator — is presented
VR Interaction Modalities for the Evaluation of Technical Device Prototypes
No full textVirtual Reality (VR) systems have reached the consumer market which offers new application areas. In our paper, we examine to what extent current VR technology can be used to perform local or remote usability tests for technical devices, e.g., coffee machines. For this, we put virtual prototypes of the technical devices into VR and let users interact with them. We implemented four interaction modalities that are suitable for low-level smartphone-based VR systems up to high fidelity, tethered systems with room-scale tracking. The modalities range from a simple gaze pointer to interaction with virtual hands. Our case study and its counter evaluation show that we are able to detect usability issues of technical devices based on their virtual prototypes in VR. However, the quality of the results depends on the matching between the task, the technical device, the prototype level, and the interaction modality
The development of a constructionist learning model for social technologies
No full textThe rapid popularity of social technologies has led to a wide spread of research studies conducted in formal and informal contexts demonstrating a wide range of their benefits in teaching and learning. Yet, the burst of studies exploring these technologies confronts with two threads with regard to their theoretical and pedagogical alignment. Firstly, a substantial number of studies is not aligned to a theoretical framework; whereas the implementation of Web 2.0 technologies in classroom settings calls for better task-technology alignment. The conundrum raised is that, whilst students increasingly engage with these tools in their everyday lives, there is still lack of Web 2.0 practices that draw on the specific features of these tools and align them with educational goals under well-designed activities.
With this in mind, this dissertation brought forward a three-year intervention, employing constructionism as an overarching theoretical framework, and unpacking the potential of social technologies as instructional tools that support social construction of artifacts by groups of language learners. The leading research question of this dissertation is “How can constructionism ground and expand the use of social technologies as social constructionist tools in learning?”. Constructionism is a theory of learning, teaching, and design, which can be summarized in the conviction that learning occurs more effectively when learners understand the world around them by creating meaningful artifacts that can be probed and shared. In an attempt to infuse elements of constructionism in the use of social technologies, group of learners were assigned a task for social construction of an artifact using social technologies in three different Computer-Assisted Language Learning settings To understand the use of social technologies through the lens of constructionism, the process that students adopted and the way technology and context fostered this process were analyzed. The implementation of the intervention made feasible the identification of (i) core dimensions of social technologies as social constructionist tools; (ii) actions that capitalize the manifestation of constructionism within social technologies (iii) teacher‟s and students‟ role within social constructionist tools; and (iv) features of different social technologies as social constructionist tools. The main component of this dissertation is the constructionist model that demonstrates the core dimensions of social technologies as social constructionist tools, with actions held for the social construction of an artifact; and a set of instructional design elements that encloses the theoretical understanding of the classroom whilst groups of learners use social technologies for constructing an artifact. The Social Constructionist Classroom (SCC) yields an environment rich in objects-to-share-with, following an artifact oriented task design and fostered through synergetic alliance of multiple social technologies, whilst moving beyond classroom walls.
As a result, the findings of this dissertation provide an in-depth understanding of how social technologies can be used for facilitating groups of learners to socially construct a shared artifact. Moreover, through the analysis of different types of social technologies, a new arena for using social technologies is deployed, offering insights for multimedia designers, interface architects, instructional designers, and practitioners towards a new culture of educational tools.Complete
Identifying References to Datasets in Publications
No full textResearch data and publications are usually stored in separate
and structurally distinct information systems. Often, links between these
resources are not explicitly available which complicates the search for
previous research. In this paper, we propose a pattern induction method
for the detection of study references in full texts. Since these references
are not specified in a standardized way and may occur inside a variety of
different contexts – i.e., captions, footnotes, or continuous text – our algo-rithm is required to induce very flexible patterns. To overcome the sparse
distribution of training instances, we induce patterns iteratively using a
bootstrapping approach. We show that our method achieves promising
results for the automatic identification of data references and is a first
step towards building an integrated information syste
Virtual Well-Being: Emotional and Behavioral Appraisal Patterns of an Immersive Experience
No full textVirtual Worlds continue to promote improvements in real life, combining the visual
appearance and the human behavior with each successive generation of hardware.
Virtual environments are used with critical implications for business, education, social
sciences and in the society at large. It is not an exaggeration to say that 3D spaces are
treated as a parallel or alternative reality, cultivating and even shaping the individual’s
personality. As a consequence, the evolution of virtual environments depends on individuals’ presence (interaction, behavior, attitude etc.), which is determined, partly, by
the emotional elicitation. Emotional impact has a significant role in an immersive experience, in that it regulates and influences the in-world beings, hence producing the
need for an in-depth investigation. However the impact of virtual experience on wellbeing remains unexplored (Riva et al., 2012). Limited evidence exists on the effectiveness of well-being in virtual environments (Gaggoli & Riva, 2013) which is complex and challenging task (Coyle et al., 2014).Complete
Linking the Parliamentary record:a new approach to metadata for legislative proceeding
No full textThis paper discusses an on-going project which aims to develop an XML architecture for linking Parliamentary and other legislative proceedings. The project has developed a schema which allows key components of the record to be linked semantically and a set of controlled vocabularies to support these linkages. The project will convert two collections of proceedings to the schema and develop a prototype web-based union catalogue for them
Investigating technology - enhanced embolied learning in real classroom settings: student's performance and learning gains
No full textΣτην εποχή της ραγδαίας τεχνολογικής ανάπτυξης, παρατηρείται μια καθολική προσπάθεια ενίσχυσης και εμπλουτισμού των παραδοσιακών πρακτικών διδασκαλίας και εκμάθησης μέσω διαφόρων τεχνολογικών εργαλείων. H σύγχρονη θεωρία της Ενσώματης Γνώσης (Embodied Cognition), κάτω από την ομπρέλα της οποίας τοποθετείται και η Ενσώματη Μάθηση (Embodied Learning), είναι ακριβώς μια τέτοια προσέγγιση. Η Ενσώματη Μάθηση αποτελεί μια κιναισθητική και πολυτροπική διαδικασία με ποικίλες δυνατότητες για τον εμπλουτισμό της παραδοσιακής εκπαιδευτικής πρακτικής. Η προσέγγιση της Ενσώματης Μάθησης υποστηρίζει την ένταξη του σώματος των μαθητών και της κίνησης στο περιβάλλον της τάξης. Συγκεκριμένα, αυτό το θεωρητικό πλαίσιο τονίζει την αδιάσπαστη σχέση μεταξύ εγκεφάλου, σώματος και περιβάλλοντος και υποστηρίζει ότι το ενεργό ανθρώπινο σώμα μπορεί να μεταβάλει τη λειτουργία του εγκεφάλου και επομένως τη γνωστική διαδικασία.
Τα τελευταία χρόνια, η χρήση αναδυόμενων τεχνολογιών σε διάφορα εκπαιδευτικά περιβάλλοντα βασίστηκε στις ιδέες της Ενσώματης Μάθησης προσφέροντας μια σημαντική θεώρηση σχετικά με το πώς το ενεργό ανθρώπινο σώμα μπορεί να επηρεάσει τη λειτουργία του εγκεφάλου και να οδηγήσει τελικά στη μάθηση. Η διερεύνηση διαδραστικών μαθησιακών περιβαλλόντων που προάγουν την εμπλοκή της φυσικής δραστηριότητας και του σώματος κατά τη διάρκεια γνωστικών και μαθησιακών εργασιών είναι ο κύριος στόχος αυτής της μελέτης. Ειδικότερα, μέσω μιας παρέμβασης που περιλαμβάνει διάφορες διαδοχικές φάσεις μικτής μεθοδολογίας, η έρευνα αυτή εστιάζει στη διερεύνηση του τρόπου μέσω του οποίου η Ενσώματη Μάθηση επηρεάζει τη συνολική απόδοση των μαθητών στο αυθεντικό περιβάλλον της τάξης κάτω από διαφορετικές συνθήκες και περιστάσεις. Οι εκπαιδευτικές παρεμβάσεις εξετάζουν, συγκεκριμένα, τη συνεισφορά της Ενσώματης Μάθησης στην ανάπτυξη των κινητικών, γνωστικών και ακαδημαϊκών δεξιοτήτων των μαθητών αλλά και τη συναισθηματική τους κατάσταση κατά τη διάρκεια της παρέμβασης.In the age of technological imperative, massive efforts are underway to enrich traditional teaching and learning practices with technology. Under the umbrella of Embodied Cognition (EC) Theory, Embodied Learning (EL) is one such approach. EL is a kinesthetic, multimodal and playful process that enriches conventional educational practice and provides ways of integrating the physical body and movement into the classroom setting. In recent years, the use of emerging embodied technologies in educational settings has built upon EL ideas to provide some useful insights into how the active body can influence the function of the brain to drive learning. This dissertation looks at EL in different learning contexts and circumstances to see how it can improve the overall performance of students in real classroom settings for specific learning purposes. The study consists of four sequential phases that use data collection and analysis to explore the impact of EL-driven technology on actual classroom practice. In particular, through a multiphase mixed methods approach, this research focuses on investigating how EL impacts student performance (i.e. motor, cognitive, academic, and emotional performance) in authentic classroom environments within different elementary classrooms, including Special Education and General Education context. Results reveal significant gains in students’ cognitive performance -Short-term memory ability (Gsm)- motor skills -Psychomotor ability (Gp) and Psychomotor Speed (Gps)- and academic performance in language and vocabulary acquisition. Findings also show improvements in students’ emotional state, resulting in increased students’ self-confidence and motivation to participate in learning process. The investigation provides a comprehensive understanding of how EL approaches can be integrated into different real classrooms, allowing researchers and teachers to enrich existing learning environments. To that end, the dissertation concludes with important insights and examples for researchers and educators on how they can implement effectively EL-driven technology in real classroom settings, as a part of the classroom curriculum.Complete
Culture, User Behaviour and Interaction in Online Social Networks (OSNs)
No full textThe notion of culture has been of great interest by the researchers in recent years, without excluding the HCI community. The HCI community examined how users behave depending on their cultural background and proposed ways for developing more acceptable user interfaces reflecting the user’s cultural background. A number of design guidelines having culture in mind have been proposed, aiming to improve the overall user experience of the corresponding target group. Several studies examining culture have also associated user behavior with Hofstede’s cultural dimensions. Despite the cultural differences, the recent success of Online Social Networks (OSNs) illustrated that a single platform can be designed and used by a broader audience. Given the high participation levels across the globe, users overcame any concerns related to the platform (functional/design) and are eager to use it regardless of their diverse cultural background. Here we discuss the major forces that are driving Facebook use. We first employed phenomenography, to explore cultural values of Greek Cypriot users in Facebook and then conducted a survey study targeting five different cultural groups. For cross-culture analysis, we utilized principal components analysis (PCA) and analysed the derived components using various statistical methods, including parametric and non-parametric tests. Results reveal that information-seeking followed by forming connections with others (social connectedness) are major motivators for Facebook use. At the same time, differences between the cultural groups have been observed, for instance, Facebook intensity, privacy concerns and trust.Complete
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