9,117 research outputs found
Quantifying subjective quality evaluations for mobile video watching in a semi-living lab context
This paper discusses results from an exploratory study in which Quality of Experience aspects related to mobile video watching were investigated in a semi-living lab setting. More specifically, we zoom in on usage patterns in a natural research context and on the subjective evaluation of high and low-resolution movie trailers that are transferred to a mobile device using two transmission protocols for video (i.e., real-time transport protocol and progressive download using HTTP). User feedback was collected by means of short questionnaires on the mobile device, combined with traditional pen and paper diaries. The subjective evaluations regarding the general technical quality, perceived distortion, fluentness of the video, and loading speed are studied and the influence of the transmission protocol and video resolution on these evaluations is analyzed. Multinomial logistic regression results in a model to estimate the subjective evaluations regarding the perceived distortion and loading speed based on objectively-measured parameters of the video session
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Education in the Wild: Contextual and Location-Based Mobile Learning in Action. A Report from the STELLAR Alpine Rendez-Vous Workshop Series
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Introduction to location-based mobile learning
[About the book]
The report follows on from a 2-day workshop funded by the STELLAR Network of Excellence as part of their 2009 Alpine Rendez-Vous workshop series and is edited by Elizabeth Brown with a foreword from Mike Sharples. Contributors have provided examples of innovative and exciting research projects and practical applications for mobile learning in a location-sensitive setting, including the sharing of good practice and the key findings that have resulted from this work. There is also a debate about whether location-based and contextual learning results in shallower learning strategies and a section detailing the future challenges for location-based learning
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Augmenting the field experience: a student-led comparison of techniques and technologies
In this study we report on our experiences of creating and running a student fieldtrip exercise which allowed students to compare a range of approaches to the design of technologies for augmenting landscape scenes. The main study site is around Keswick in the English Lake District, Cumbria, UK, an attractive upland environment popular with tourists and walkers. The aim of the exercise for the students was to assess the effectiveness of various forms of geographic information in augmenting real landscape scenes, as mediated through a range of techniques and technologies. These techniques were: computer-generated acetate overlays showing annotated wireframe views from certain key points; a custom-designed application running on a PDA; a mediascape running on the mScape software on a GPS-enabled mobile phone; Google Earth on a tablet PC; and a head-mounted in-field Virtual Reality system. Each group of students had all five techniques available to them, and were tasked with comparing them in the context of creating a visitor guide to the area centred on the field centre. Here we summarise their findings and reflect upon some of the broader research questions emerging from the project
Mobility is the Message: Experiments with Mobile Media Sharing
This thesis explores new mobile media sharing applications by building, deploying, and studying their use. While we share media in many different ways both on the web and on mobile phones, there are few ways of sharing media with people physically near us. Studied were three designed and built systems: Push!Music, Columbus, and Portrait Catalog, as well as a fourth commercially available system â Foursquare. This thesis offers four contributions: First, it explores the design space of co-present media sharing of four test systems. Second, through user studies of these systems it reports on how these come to be used. Third, it explores new ways of conducting trials as the technical mobile landscape has changed. Last, we look at how the technical solutions demonstrate different lines of thinking from how similar solutions might look today.
Through a Human-Computer Interaction methodology of design, build, and study, we look at systems through the eyes of embodied interaction and examine how the systems come to be in use. Using Goffmanâs understanding of social order, we see how these mobile media sharing systems allow people to actively present themselves through these media. In turn, using McLuhanâs way of understanding media, we reflect on how these new systems enable a new type of medium distinct from the web centric media, and how this relates directly to mobility.
While media sharing is something that takes place everywhere in western society, it is still tied to the way media is shared through computers. Although often mobile, they do not consider the mobile settings. The systems in this thesis treat mobility as an opportunity for design. It is still left to see how this mobile media sharing will come to present itself in peopleâs everyday life, and when it does, how we will come to understand it and how it will transform society as a medium distinct from those before. This thesis gives a glimpse at what this future will look like
Temporal ambivalences in smartphone use: Conflicting flows, conflicting responsibilities
This article explores implications of the central position of the smartphone in an age of constant connectivity. Based on a qualitative study of 50 informants, we ask how users experience and handle temporal ambivalences in everyday smartphone use, drawing on the concepts flow and responsibilization to conceptualize central dimensions of such ambivalences. The notion of conflicting flows illuminates how brief checking cycles expand at the expense of other activities, resulting in a temporal conflict experienced by users. Responsibilization points to how users take individual responsibility for managing such conflicting flows, and to how this practice is difficult and conflict-ridden. We conclude that while individual time management is often framed as the solution to temporal conflicts, such attempts at regulating smartphone use appear inadequate. Our conceptualization of temporal ambivalence offers a more nuanced understanding of why this is the case.publishedVersio
In the eye of the beholder:promoting learner-centric design to develop mobile games for learning
Out of the project EMuRgency a game-based learning environment evolved, which trains school children in providing reanimation and cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). The application gets players to act as if they were in a real case of emergency. This paper reports on a formal usability study conducted with two different groups of learners, regular learners and learners with special educational needs (SEN). With the study we compared the two groups of learners with regard to game usability and effectiveness of the intervention. Our intention was to better understand the different needs and requirements to learning materials that game designer need to take into consideration in order to make the learning experience successful for both groups. A total of 89 children played the game simulation. Results showed differences in perception and effectiveness of individual mechanisms for the two groups with regard to usability or switching between tasks and mobile device.This publication was partly financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), regions of the Euregio Meuse-Rhine and the participating institutions under the INTERREG IVa program (EMR.INT4-1.2.-2011-04/070, http://www.emurgency.eu)
âTaking holdâ of mobile phone stories in a Cape Flats reading club
Magister Artium - MAThis ethnographically-orientated intervention explored how members of a Cape Flats reading
club âtook holdâ (Street, 2009) of digital literacy in their engagement with online fictional
stories accessed by a mobile phone. The Masifunde reading club takes place inside the premises
of a church located in one of the most impoverished and resource-constrained communities on
the outskirts of Cape Town. The club is connected to a bigger sets of clubs under the Nalâibali
reading-for-enjoyment campaign seeking to create nurturing spaces for learning by introducing
children to literacy through story-telling. I wanted to diversify and increase the literacy material
available by introducing mobile phones to the club.
This research paper is theoretically grounded in the New Literacy Studies (NLS) framework
which argues that the social turn and digital turn to literacy have transformed literacy. I adopted
an ethnographic approach to literacy in order to understand how mobile reading is âtaken holdâ
of within an already established activities of the club which are conceptualized using
Goffmanâs (1983) âinteraction orderâ. Goffmanâs (1983) âinteraction orderâ was used to map
the established print-based interaction order and then to examine the practices of reading online
fiction and the materiality of the mobile phone as taken hold of within this interaction order.
The notion of âtaking holdâ of was further extended to reveal the ways in which mobile stories
were resemiotized in the shared practices of the club members. The introduction of mobile
phones is viewed within Prinslooâs (2005) âplaced resourcesâ concept that pays attention to the
specificity of the context in how the phone was taken hold of. What is more, through Goffmanâs
(1956) back stage and front stage concept, I was able to trace using Kerâs (2005) âtext-chainâ
concept, how interactions in the back region WhatsApp group chat moved across space-time
to the front stage interactions in the Saturday club event. This revealed the ways in which the
uses and valuing of the phone changed across these spaces, with the phone being naturalised in
the back stage, but being treated as a difficult object in the front stage sessions by the
volunteers, while the children took up the phones in easy ways consistent with the existing
interaction order and therefore as placed resources. The study reveals that triumphalist claims
about uptake of digital technologies in resource-poor contexts and dismal internet connectivity
need to be treated with caution
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