Opening new dimensions for e-Tourism

In this paper we describe an e-Tourism environment that takes a community-driven approach to foster a lively society of travelers who exchange travel experiences, recommend tourism destinations or just listen to catch some interesting gossip. Moreover, business transactions such as booking a trip or getting assistance from travel advisors or community members are constituent parts of this environment. All these happen in an integrated, game-like e-Business application where each e-Tourist is impersonated as an avatar. More precisely, we apply 3D Electronic Institutions, a framework developed and employed in the area of multi-agent systems, to the tourism domain. The system interface is realized by means of a 3D game engine that provides sophisticated 3D visualization and enables humans to interact with the environment. We present "itchy feet", a prototype implementing this 3D e-Tourism environment to showcase first visual impressions. This new environment is a perfect research playground for examining heterogeneous societies comprising humans and software agents, and their relationship in e-Tourism. © Springer-Verlag London Limited 2006

Evaluación de aplicaciones educativas de AR con estudiantes adultos

There is a growing interest in the educational applications of Augmented Reality (AR). While most applications of these technologies have been examined in the context of children education, our knowledge about their usefulness in adult education is deficient and particularly more in the category of Location-Based Augmented Reality (LBMAR) games, so the aim of this thesis is to examine the opinions of adult learners (young, middle-aged and elderly) about one particular LBMAR game, the “Ingress”. The main problems addressed by this research comprise questions relating to the usefulness of some key technological components of AR in education (secondarily) and to aspects of training adults by using AR (primarily). As concerns the technological aspects, i.e. "which one of the three types of AR (marker-based, markerless, location-based) is more often associated with naturalistic approaches and what are their relative advantages?”, this research showed that naturalistic approaches applied to marker-based AR enhance active participation in virtual environments, motivate learners, promote personal involvement in conquering new information, offer different perspectives of the content and arouse interest for knowledge. In the case of markerless AR, naturalistic designs foster participants’ collaboration in games, enhance interactivity, offer panoramic views, visualization, and the possibility to examine the role of visual controls. Moreover, naturalistic approaches applied to location-based AR are suitable for designing multidisciplinary applications, can be used for training and have the possibility to be designed so as to account for locality and context. The fact that, as appears from the peer-reviewed literature that was examined, the location-based AR technologies are more appropriate for education and for smartphones, hints that a deeper examination of their potential usefulness for education (and for adult education in particular) might be interesting. As concerns the educational aspects, which also constitute the main focus of the thesis, these focus on the exploration of the usefulness of the LBMAR game “Ingress” in adult education, by answering two intertwined questions: a) how to assess opinions of adult learners about the LBMAR game “Ingress”? and b) what do adult learners think about this game and how do they perceive its features? Providing answers to these questions is tantamount to receiving adequate results from quantitative and qualitative empirical research which would be designed so as to explore their opinions, views and attitudes with respect to this LBMAR game. Hence, 45 adult persons from Greece, aged 20 to 62,cooperated as subjects of this research. They followed a short introductory informal training (on AR, VR, MAR and the games that are relevant to these technologies) by the researcher of this thesis and were subsequently given the instructions of how to use “Ingress” on a smartphone. The quantitative research was carried out before and after training and all trainees participated by filling 31 Likert-type closed questions before and after training. The qualitative research was based on the analysis of their responses to two different sets of open-ended questions. The first set consisted in 5 such questions to which answered 24 participants and the second set had 2 broader questions to which responded 36 participants. This research showed the advantages for adult education of integrating the ARCS model into the learning phase of an LBMAR game. Specifically, it was shown that using Keller’s widely known “ARCS model” (Attention – Relevance – Confidence - Satisfaction) enabled the classification of users’ responses with respect to their interaction with the game and is therefore useful in evaluating adult education with LBMAR games. The players’ responses did not change linearly with their age and the training has had different impact on each age group of learners. Also, statistical analyses proved that training increased the scores of the factors of ARCS model. Other results of this research showed that those over 36 years old focused more on the facts that the play of “Ingress” is primarily a geographical game and its scenario reflects interesting discussions about the evolution of humanity. Participants in the age groups 20–35 and >52 agreed that the game does not have idle phases, that it combines excitement with insecurity, and that it is pleasant to play locally a game of planetary proportions.Another age-related observation concerned the answers to the question (“How do you feel when you endow the geographical space with personal preferences?”) between age groups with age groups agreeing in pairs: the first two age groups (20–30) and (30–40) agreed more than with the last two (40–50) and (50–60). Yet, in question “Do you think that the game offers opportunities for learning and teaching geography, building on your previous geographical knowledge?” , there was an overlap in the responses of participants among age groups. As for the first question, the most critical concept was: “the users feel a kind of nostalgia”, followed by the concept “the users consider portals as personal creations”. In the case of the second question, the most critical concept was that the participants believe that the game offers entirely new opportunities for education in geography, compared with their previous experiences. This fosters an evidence of constructivist approaches to adult education and, also, relevance of some other prominent theories of adult education such as humanism. Methodologically, this research it was shown that content analysis is a valuable method for exploring opinions and attitudes of adult users towards MAR games and Jaccard indices can be used to quantitatively explore themes emerging from content analysis. Content analysis was performed on the users’ responses qualitatively in order to identify characteristic sentences expressing attitudes and opinions. For the quantitative assessment of similarities between responses for each question and subconcept, the Jaccard similarity index was calculated pair-wise for every pair of participants. In addition to the Jaccard indices and furthering the scope of new methods for content analysis, this thesis shows how to use Social Network Analysis (SNA) to model concept maps, thus opening up excellent opportunities to create visualizations of concepts and their inter-relationships. Quantitative aspects of SNA analysis (i.e. by using radial centrality and information centrality) provide mechanisms suitable to measure internal relationships in concept maps (in addition to visual inspection) that would not otherwise be visible. Using SNA enabled the classification of users’ responses with respect to their interaction with the game and therefore was a fruitful approach for education that involves MAR games. Furthermore, with this novelty, it is shown how texts derived from interviews or from responses to open questions by different individuals can be analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively with SNA. Concluding, this research has produced novelties at both the educational and the methodological levels. As concerns adult education, it was shown that i) LBMAR games are suitable for it, ii) adult education about them can be enhanced by following Keller’s ARCS model, iii) perception and satisfaction of adult learners depends on age, and iv) certain theories of adult education (i.e. constructivism and humanism) can be relevant when adult learners use LBMAR games such as “Ingress”. As concerns methods of educational research, this research suggested entirely new methods, for first time ever, for analyzing data that are derived from trainees' responses to open questions. These new methods are content analysis of the participants’ responses with the use of Jaccard indices and methods of SNA and can have a wider applicability to educational research.Existe un creciente interés por las aplicaciones educativas de la Realidad Aumentada (RA). Mientras que la mayoría de las aplicaciones de estas tecnologías se han examinado en el contexto de la educación infantil, nuestro conocimiento sobre su utilidad en la educación de adultos es deficiente y, en particular, más en la categoría de juegos de Realidad Aumentada Basada en la Localización (LBMAR), por lo que el objetivo de esta tesis es examinar las opiniones de los estudiantes adultos (jóvenes, de mediana edad y mayores) sobre un juego LBMAR, el "Ingress". Los principales problemas que aborda esta investigación comprenden cuestiones relacionadas con la utilidad de algunos componentes tecnológicos de la RA en la educación (secundariamente) y con aspectos de la formación de adultos mediante el uso de la RA (principalmente). En cuanto a los aspectos tecnológicos, es decir "¿cuál de los tres tipos de RA (basada en marcadores, sin marcadores, basada en la localización) se asocia más a los enfoques naturalistas y cuáles son sus ventajas relativas?", esta investigación demostró que los enfoques naturalistas aplicados a la RA basada en marcadores potencian la participación activa en entornos virtuales, motivan a los alumnos, promueven la implicación personal en la conquista de nueva información, ofrecen diferentes perspectivas del contenido y despiertan el interés por el conocimiento. En el caso de la RA sin marcadores, los diseños naturalistas fomentan la colaboración de los participantes en los juegos, mejoran la interactividad, ofrecen vistas panorámicas, visualización y la posibilidad de examinar los controles visuales. Además, los enfoques naturalistas aplicados a la RA basada en la localización son adecuados para el diseño de aplicaciones multidisciplinares, pueden utilizarse para la formación y tienen la posibilidad de diseñarse teniendo en cuenta la localidad y el contexto. El hecho de que, como se desprende de la literatura revisada por pares que se examinó, las tecnologías de RA basadas en la localización son más apropiadas para la educación y para los teléfonos smartphones, sugiere que podría ser interesante un examen más profundo de su utilidad potencial para la educación (y para la educación de adultos en particular). En cuanto a los aspectos educativos, que también constituyen el foco principal de la tesis, éstos se centran en la exploración de la utilidad del juego LBMAR "Ingress" en la educación de adultos, respondiendo a dos preguntas entrelazadas: a) ¿cómo evaluar las opiniones de los alumnos adultos sobre el juego LBMAR "Ingress"? y b) ¿qué piensan los alumnos adultos sobre este juego y cómo perciben sus características? Dar respuesta a estas preguntas equivale a recibir resultados adecuados de una investigación empírica, cuantitativa y cualitativa, que se diseñaría para explorar sus opiniones, puntos de vista y actitudes con respecto a este juego LBMAR. Por lo tanto, 45 personas adultas de Grecia, con edades entre 20 y 62 años, colaboraron como sujetos de esta investigación. Siguieron una breve formación informal introductoria por parte del investigador de esta tesis (sobre RA, realidad virtual, RA móvil, y sobre los juegos relacionados con estas tecnologías) y posteriormente se les dieron las instrucciones de cómo utilizar "Ingress" en un smartphone. La investigación cuantitativa se llevó a cabo antes y después de la formación y todos los alumnos participaron respondiendo a 31 preguntas cerradas del tipo Likert antes y después de la formación. La investigación cualitativa se basó en el análisis de sus respuestas a dos conjuntos diferentes de preguntas abiertas. El primer conjunto constaba de 5 preguntas de este tipo (a las que respondieron 24 participantes) y el segundo conjunto tenía 2 preguntas más amplias, a las que respondieron 36 participantes. La investigación cuantitativa mostró las ventajas para la educación de adultos de integrar el modelo ARCS en la fase de aprendizaje de un juego LBMAR. En concreto, se demostró que la utilización del conocido "modelo ARCS" de Keller (Atención - Relevancia - Confianza - Satisfacción) permitió clasificar las respuestas de los usuarios con respecto a sus interacciones con el juego y, también, es útil para evaluar la educación de adultos con juegos LBMAR. Las respuestas de los jugadores no cambiaron linealmente con su edad y el entrenamiento ha tenido un impacto diferente en cada grupo de edad de los alumnos. Además, los análisis estadísticos demostraron que el entrenamiento aumentó las puntuaciones de los factores del modelo ARCS. Otros resultados de esta investigación mostraron que los mayores de 36 años se centraron más en el hecho de que el juego "Ingress" es principalmente un juego geográfico y su escenario refleja interesantes debates sobre la evolución de la humanidad. Las opiniones de los participantes de los grupos de edad de 20-35 y >52 coincidieron en que el juego no tiene fases ociosas, que combina la emoción con la inseguridad y que es agradable jugar a nivel local a un juego de proporciones planetarias. Otra observación relacionada con la edad se refería a las respuestas a la pregunta ("¿Cómo te sientes cuando dotas al espacio geográfico de preferencias personales?") entre grupos de edad que coincidían: los dos primeros grupos de edad (20-30) y (30-40) estaban más de acuerdo que los dos últimos (40-50) y (50-60). Sin embargo, en la pregunta "¿Crees que el juego ofrece oportunidades para aprender y enseñar geografía, aprovechando tus conocimientos geográficos previos?" hubo un solapamiento en las respuestas de los participantes entre los grupos de edad. En cuanto a la primera pregunta, el concepto más crítico fue: "los usuarios sienten una especie de nostalgia", seguido del concepto "los usuarios consideran los portales como creaciones personales". En el caso de la segunda pregunta, el concepto más crítico fue que los participantes creen que el juego ofrece oportunidades totalmente nuevas para la educación en geografía en comparación con sus experiencias anteriores. Esto fomenta una evidencia de los enfoques constructivistas de la educación de adultos y, también, la relevancia de algunas otras teorías prominentes de la educación de adultos, como el humanismo. Metodológicamente, esta investigación demostró también que el análisis de contenido es un método valioso para explorar las opiniones y actitudes de los usuarios adultos hacia los juegos MAR y los índices de Jaccard pueden utilizarse para explorar cuantitativamente los temas que surgen del análisis de contenido. El análisis de contenido se realizó sobre las respuestas de los usuarios de forma cualitativa para identificar las frases características que expresan actitudes y opiniones. Para la evaluación cuantitativa de las similitudes entre las respuestas de cada pregunta y subconcepto, se calculó el índice de similitud de Jaccard por parejas para cada par de participantes. Además de los índices de Jaccard y de ampliar el alcance de los nuevos métodos de análisis de contenido, esta tesis muestra cómo utilizar el Análisis de Redes Sociales (Social Networks Analysis - SNA) para modelar los mapas conceptuales, abriendo así excelentes oportunidades para crear visualizaciones de los conceptos y sus interrelaciones. Los aspectos cuantitativos del análisis SNA (es decir mediante el uso de la centralidad radial y la centralidad de la información) proporcionan mecanismos adecuados para medir las relaciones internas en los mapas conceptuales (además de la inspección visual) que de otro modo no serían visibles. El uso del SNA permitió la clasificación de las respuestas de los usuarios con respecto a su interacción con el juego y, por lo tanto, fue un enfoque fructífero para la educación que involucra los juegos MAR. Además, con esta novedad, se muestra cómo los textos derivados de las entrevistas o de las respuestas a las preguntas abiertas de diferentes individuos pueden ser analizados tanto cualitativamente como cuantitativamente usando SNA. En conclusión, esta investigación ha aportado novedades, tanto a nivel educativo como metodológico. En lo que respecta a la educación de adultos, se ha demostrado que i) los juegos LBMAR son adecuados para ella, ii) la educación de adultos sobre ellos puede mejorarse siguiendo el modelo ARCS de Keller, iii) la percepción y la satisfacción de los alumnos adultos depende de la edad, y iv) ciertas teorías de la educación de adultos (es decir, el constructivismo y el humanismo) pueden ser relevantes cuando los alumnos adultos utilizan juegos LBMAR como "Ingress". En cuanto a los métodos de investigación educativa, esta investigación sugirió métodos totalmente nuevos para analizar los datos que se derivan de las respuestas de los alumnos a las preguntas abiertas. Estos nuevos métodos son el análisis de contenido de las respuestas de los participantes con el uso de los índices de Jaccard y los métodos de SNA y pueden tener una aplicabilidad más amplia a la investigación educativa

The arts of action

The theory and culture of the arts has largely focused on the arts of objects, and neglected the arts of action – the “process arts”. In the process arts, artists create artifacts to engender activity in their audience, for the sake of the audience’s aesthetic appreciation of their own activity. This includes appreciating their own deliberations, choices, reactions, and movements. The process arts include games, urban planning, improvised social dance, cooking, and social food rituals. In the traditional object arts, the central aesthetic properties occur in the artistic artifact itself. It is the painting that is beautiful; the novel that is dramatic. In the process arts, the aesthetic properties occur in the activity of the appreciator. It is the game player’s own decisions that are elegant, the rock climber’s own movement that is graceful, and the tango dancers’ rapport that is beautiful. The artifact’s role is to call forth and shape that activity, guiding it along aesthetic lines. I offer a theory of the process arts. Crucially, we must distinguish between the designed artifact and the prescribed focus of aesthetic appreciation. In the object arts, these are one and the same. The designed artifact is the painting, which is also the prescribed focus of appreciation. In the process arts, they are different. The designed artifact is the game, but the appreciator is prescribed to appreciate their own activity in playing the game. Next, I address the complex question of who the artist really is in a piece of process art — the designer or the active appreciator? Finally, I diagnose the lowly status of the process arts

Simple identification tools in FishBase

Simple identification tools for fish species were included in the FishBase information system from its inception. Early tools made use of the relational model and characters like fin ray meristics. Soon pictures and drawings were added as a further help, similar to a field guide. Later came the computerization of existing dichotomous keys, again in combination with pictures and other information, and the ability to restrict possible species by country, area, or taxonomic group. Today, www.FishBase.org offers four different ways to identify species. This paper describes these tools with their advantages and disadvantages, and suggests various options for further development. It explores the possibility of a holistic and integrated computeraided strategy

Communicating the Past in the Digital Age: Proceedings of the International Conference on Digital Methods in Teaching and Learning in Archaeology (12-13 October 2018)

Recent developments in the field of archaeology are not only progressing archaeological fieldwork but also changing the way we practise and present archaeology today. As these digital technologies are being used more and more every day on excavations or in museums, this also means that we must change the way we approach teaching and communicating archaeology as a discipline. This volume presents the outcome of a two-day international symposium on digital methods in teaching and learning in archaeology held at the University of Cologne in October 2018. Specialists from around the world share their views on the newest developments in the field of archaeology and the way we teach these with the help of archaeogaming, augmented and virtual reality, 3D reconstruction and many more

A Review of the Open Educational Resources (OER) Movement: Achievements, Challenges, and New Opportunities

Examines the state of the foundation's efforts to improve educational opportunities worldwide through universal access to and use of high-quality academic content

The eLIDA CAMEL model of collaborative partnership: a community of practice in design for learning

Using a communities of practice (CoP) e-learning model for collaborative partnership in Design for Learning (D4L) can facilitate successful innovation while enabling ongoing 'critical friend' appraisals of effective practice. This paper reports on 21 e-learning case studies collected by the JISC-funded UK eLIDA CAMEL Design for Learning Project. The project implemented and evaluated learning design (LD) tools in higher and further education within the JISC Design for Learning pedagogic e-learning programme in 2006-07. Project partners carried out user evaluations on innovative tools with a learning design functionality, collecting design for learning case studies and LD sequences in a range of post-16/HE contexts using LAMS and Moodle. The project brought together learning activity sequences from post-16/HE partners into a collaborative e-learning community of practice based on the CAMEL (Collaborative Approaches to the Management of e-Learning) model, contributing to international developments in design for learning. This paper briefly provides an overview of the key project outputs in terms of their contribution to e-learning innovations, including evaluation results from teachers and students using online surveys. The paper explores intentionality in the development of a community of practice in design for learning, reporting on trials of learning design and social software in bridging tensions between formalised intra-institutional e-learning relationships and inter-institutional project team dynamic D4L practitioner development. Following a brief report of practitioner D4L e-learning case studies and student feedback, the catalytic role of the 'critical friend' is highlighted and recommended as a key ingredient in the successful development of a nomadic model of communities of practice in the management of e-learning projects. eLIDA CAMEL Partners included the Association of Learning Technology (ALT), JISC infoNet, three universities and five FE/Sixth Form Colleges. Results reported to the UK JISC Experts' Pedagogy Group demonstrated e-learning innovations by practitioners in D4L case studies, illuminated by the role of the 'critical friend', Professor Mark Stiles of Staffordshire University. The project also benefited from case study evaluations by Dr Liz Masterman of Oxford University Learning Technologies Group and the leading work of ALT and JISC infoNet in the development of the CAMEL model

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

Trends on Educational Gamification: Challenges and Learning Opportunities

Games are a natural activity—we all know how to play. Perhaps this is the key feature that explains the increase in the use of game-based learning (GBL) strategies: Applying games to education converts education into a universal activity. Over the last ten years, the way in which education and training is delivered has considerably changed, not only due to a new technologic environment—plenty of social networks, MOOCs, etc.—but also because of the appearance of new methodologies. Such new methodologies are shifting the center of gravity: from the teacher to the student, with the aim of awakening relational aspects, as well as promoting imagination and divergent thinking. One new approach that holds considerable promise for helping to engage learners is, indeed, game-based learning (GBL). However, while a growing number of institutions are beginning to see the validity of GBL, there are still many challenges to overcome before this type of learning can become widespread.In this Special Issue, we want to gather several studies and experiences in GBL to be shared with other teachers and researchers