Mobile exergaming in adolescents’ everyday life—contextual design of where, when, with whom, and how: the SmartLife case

Exergames, more specifically console-based exergames, are generally enjoyed by adolescents and known to increase physical activity. Nevertheless, they have a reduced usage over time and demonstrate little effectiveness over the long term. In order to increase playing time, mobile exergames may increase potential playing time, but need to be engaging and integrated in everyday life. The goal of the present study was to examine the context of gameplay for mobile exergaming in adolescents’ everyday life to inform game design and the integration of gameplay into everyday life. Eight focus groups were conducted with 49 Flemish adolescents (11 to 17 years of age). The focus groups were audiotaped, transcribed, and analyzed by means of thematic analysis via Nvivo 11 software (QSR International Pty Ltd., Victoria, Australia). The adolescents indicated leisure time and travel time to and from school as suitable timeframes for playing a mobile exergame. Outdoor gameplay should be restricted to the personal living environment of adolescents. Besides outdoor locations, the game should also be adaptable to at-home activities. Activities could vary from running outside to fitness exercises inside. Furthermore, the social context of the game was important, e.g., playing in teams or meeting at (virtual) meeting points. Physical activity tracking via smart clothing was identified as a motivator for gameplay. By means of this study, game developers may be better equipped to develop mobile exergames that embed gameplay in adolescents’ everyday life

Using the organizational and narrative thread structures in an e-book to support comprehension.

Stories, themes, concepts and references are organized structurally and purposefully in most books. A person reading a book needs to understand themes and concepts within the context. Schanks Dynamic Memory theory suggested that building on existing memory structures is essential to cognition and learning. Pirolli and Card emphasized the need to provide people with an independent and improved ability to access and understand information in their information seeking activities. Through a review of users reading behaviours and of existing e-Book user interfaces, we found that current e-Book browsers provide minimal support for comprehending the content of large and complex books. Readers of an e-Book need user interfaces that present and relate the organizational and narrative structures, and moreover, reveal the thematic structures. This thesis addresses the problem of providing readers with effective scaffolding of multiple structures of an e-Book in the user interface to support reading for comprehension. Recognising a story or topic as the basic unit in a book, we developed novel story segmentation techniques for discovering narrative segments, and adapted story linking techniques for linking narrative threads in semi-structured linear texts of an e-Book. We then designed an e-Book user interface to present the complex structures of the e-Book, as well as to assist the reader to discover these structures. We designed and developed evaluation methodologies to investigate reading and comprehension in e-Books, in order to assess the effectiveness of this user interface. We designed semi-directed reading tasks using a Story-Theme Map, and a set of corresponding measurements for the answers. We conducted user evaluations with book readers. Participants were asked to read stories, to browse and link related stories, and to identify major themes of stories in an e-Book. This thesis reports the experimental design and results in detail. The results confirmed that the e-Book interface helped readers perform reading tasks more effectively. The most important and interesting finding is that the interface proved to be more helpful to novice readers who had little background knowledge of the book. In addition, each component that supported the user interface was evaluated separately in a laboratory setting and, these results too are reported in the thesis

Peer Assisted Learning for International Business and Languages Students

This report provides a comprehensive outline of the context for the Peer Assisted Learning Project and the process of implementation in the BA (Hons) International Business and Languages in the academic year 2009-2010. It also includes a set of recommendations arising from the project and it concludes with an outline for future work in the are

Design, implementation and evaluation of transnational collaborative programmes in astronomy education and public outreach

This thesis presents a study of how science can most effectively be used to engage and educate the global public and specifically describes the role of astronomy in doing this. Astronomy has a special place in the field of science education and public engagement with science. It has great appeal for large sections of the public for several reasons. We shall use astronomy as a case study to consider the effect and impact of transnational collaborations with innovative approaches and centralised coordination in science education and public outreach. The thesis is based on eight years of designing, implementing and evaluating transnational collaborative programmes in astronomy education and public outreach, from the perspective of the practitioner. We shall also show that large global science EPO projects can result in sustainable outcomes that outlive the projects themselves and analyse the various aspects of global science communication project that are necessary for their success.History of Scienc

The Infosyst TIMES, Vol. 3, No. 2

SCSU Impresses at Inaugural Student360 Conference TERP 10 ERP Integration of Business IS Graduates get OPT Extension Meet the Faculty: Dr. Jim Chen, Dr. Paul Safonov, Dr. Jianxun Li Meet the IS Club President, Kehinde Sodunke Shoveling the Snow, Shivendran Tiruchanpalli Application Design, Terry Kisner Alumnus Insight, Hareesh Reddy My Journey, Jayakrishnan Karunanidhi NSF STEM Scholarship, Kayla Jensen Information Systems Role in Sustainability: Why is this important? Student Research Colloquium ABET Accreditation ITS Club + IA Club = CSIA Club Uncovering Fraud Triangle SCSU and Maverick Partnership Recognize Five Years of Success CSIA Competes in Cyber Defense Competition CSIA Club Works on Technical Skill

Innovando en la definición de estudios de casos en la ingeniería del software

La tarea de proponer al alumnado un estudio de caso en las asignaturas de ingeniería del software suele ser abordado de forma que todo el alumnado realiza el mismo proyecto. Esta práctica útil en asignaturas de los primeros cursos, no lo es tanto en cursos posteriores en los que el alumnado debe alcanzar las competencias en un nivel superior. Sin embargo, conseguir que el alumnado sea capaz de definir su propio estudio de caso para luego implementarlo y que este le resulte motivador no es siempre una tarea fácil. Este artículo presenta una experiencia docente cuya finalidad es la de guiar al alumnado en la definición de estudios de casos en una asignatura del ámbito de la ingeniería del software. Para ello se aplican tres técnicas docentes innovadoras combinadas en tres fases que permiten generar ideas innovadoras y analizarlas hasta conseguir la definición de un estudio de caso. Mediante LEGO SERIOUS PLAY se ofrece al alumnado un marco de reflexión para generar soluciones innovadoras a los problemas reales de los usuarios. El storytelling permite guiar al alumnado en el prototipado de la solución para una mejor comprensión de la misma. Finalmente, se usa el role playing para la obtención de los requisitos de usuario que permitan completar la definición del estudio de caso.The task of proposing a case study to students in software engineering subjects is usually approached in such a way that all students carry out the same project. This useful practice in subjects in the first courses, is not so useful in higher courses in which students must reach a higher level of skills. However, getting students to be able to define their own case study to implement it and find it motivating is not always an easy task. This paper presents a teaching experience whose purpose is to guide students in defining case studies in a subject in the context of software engineering. Three combined innovative teaching techniques are applied in three phases allowing to generate innovative ideas and analyse them until achieve the definition of a case study. Through LEGO SERIOUS PLAY, students are offered a framework for reflection to generate innovative solutions to real user problems. Storytelling allows the student to be guided in the prototyping of the solution for a better understanding of it. Finally, Role Playing is used to obtain the user requirements that allow complete the definition of the case study