76 research outputs found

    Augmenting Collaborative MOOC Video Viewing with Synchronized Textbook

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    We designed BOOC, an application that synchronizes textbook content with MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) videos. The application leverages a tablet display split into two views to present lecture videos and textbook content simultaneously. The display of the book serves as peripheral contextual help for video viewing activities. A five-week user study with 6 groups of MOOC students in a blended on-campus course was conducted. Our study in this paper reports how textbooks are used in authentic MOOC study groups and further explores the effects of the book-mapping feature of the BOOC player in enhancing the collaborative MOOC learning experiences

    Augmenting Learning Activities with Contextual Information Scent

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    Students often have information needs while carrying out a multitude of learning activities at universities. When information is needed for investigating a problem, the student may interrupt the work and switch to an information seeking task. As Internet connectivity becomes ubiquitous, searching information has been routinized and integrated in the learning experience. However, information needs are not always fully recognized, or they can not be well articulated. A MOOC student may perceive a video to be difficult, but fails to express what information can be helpful. Sometimes it is improper to interrupt the learning task for searching information, especially when social factors are concerned, e.g. in a seminar talk. These situations create research potentials for making ambient information cues, hereafter referred to as contextual information scent (CIS), available to address students' situational information needs in learning activities. The CIS is designed to combine context-awareness with information seeking, ambient interaction as well as serendipitous encounter. In this thesis, we investigate the CIS mainly in collaborative learning activities. We explore three different contexts: conversation, groupware interaction and video content for MOOC learning. RaindropSearch investigates capturing conversational words as CIS for building search queries, while the TileSearch triggers Web searches based on group discussions and retrieved image and Wikipedia results as CIS for serendipitous interactions. These two explorations both focus on conversation context and provide initial insights into the CIS design practice. Next, we present MeetHub Search, which includes three CIS components based on text interactions in a groupware. Our last prototype, the BOOC Player employs textbook pages as CIS and links them to MOOC videos during the course of collaborative video viewing. All prototypes show how we manipulated design parameters to reduce distraction, increase relevance and ensure timeliness. The studies also exhibit the influence of group dynamics on the use of CIS. We finally extend our research scope to individual MOOC learning and summarize the design insights obtained from MOOC analytics. The contributions of this thesis are summarized as (1) a dedicated research framework derived from both research literature and requirement analysis for recognizing the design challenges, design principles and design space of CIS. The framework lays the foundation for us to explore different contexts in this thesis, where we generated (2) design implications that identify the key attributes of CIS. Last but not least, we employed (3) a variety of evaluation methodologies in this thesis for assessing the usability as well as the benefit and appeal of CIS

    European Distance and E-Learning Network (EDEN). Conference Proceedings

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    Erasmus+ Programme of the European UnionThe powerful combination of the information age and the consequent disruption caused by these unstable environments provides the impetus to look afresh and identify new models and approaches for education (e.g. OERs, MOOCs, PLEs, Learning Analytics etc.). For learners this has taken a fantastic leap into aggregating, curating and co-curating and co-producing outside the boundaries of formal learning environments – the networked learner is sharing voluntarily and for free, spontaneously with billions of people.Supported by Erasmus+ Programme of the European Unioninfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

    ENHANCING EXPRESSIVITY OF DOCUMENT-CENTERED COLLABORATION WITH MULTIMODAL ANNOTATIONS

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    As knowledge work moves online, digital documents have become a staple of human collaboration. To communicate beyond the constraints of time and space, remote and asynchronous collaborators create digital annotations over documents, substituting face-to-face meetings with online conversations. However, existing document annotation interfaces depend primarily on text commenting, which is not as expressive or nuanced as in-person communication where interlocutors can speak and gesture over physical documents. To expand the communicative capacity of digital documents, we need to enrich annotation interfaces with face-to-face-like multimodal expressions (e.g., talking and pointing over texts). This thesis makes three major contributions toward multimodal annotation interfaces for enriching collaboration around digital documents. The first contribution is a set of design requirements for multimodal annotations drawn from our user studies and explorative literature surveys. We found that the major challenges were to support lightweight access to recorded voice, to control visual occlusions of graphically rich audio interfaces, and to reduce speech anxiety in voice comment production. Second, to address these challenges, we present RichReview, a novel multimodal annotation system. RichReview is designed to capture natural communicative expressions in face-to-face document descriptions as the combination of multimodal user inputs (e.g., speech, pen-writing, and deictic pen-hovering). To balance the consumption and production of speech comments, the system employs (1) cross-modal indexing interfaces for faster audio navigation, (2) fluid document-annotation layout for reduced visual clutter, and (3) voice synthesis-based speech editing for reduced speech anxiety. The third contribution is a series of evaluations that examines the effectiveness of our design solutions. Results of our lab studies show that RichReview can successfully address the above mentioned interface problems of multimodal annotations. A subsequent series of field deployment studies test the real-world efficacy of RichReview by deploying the system for document-centered conversation activities in classrooms, such as instructor feedback for student assignments and peer discussions about course material. The results suggest that using rich annotation helps students better understand the instructor’s comments, and makes them feel more valued as a person. From the results of the peer-discussion study, we learned that retaining the richness of original speech is the key to the success of speech commenting. What follows is the discussion on the benefits, challenges, and future of multimodal annotation interfaces, and technical innovations required to realize the vision

    The student-produced electronic portfolio in craft education

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    The authors studied primary school students’ experiences of using an electronic portfolio in their craft education over four years. A stimulated recall interview was applied to collect user experiences and qualitative content analysis to analyse the collected data. The results indicate that the electronic portfolio was experienced as a multipurpose tool to support learning. It makes the learning process visible and in that way helps focus on and improves the quality of learning. © ISLS.Peer reviewe

    Enhancing Free-text Interactions in a Communication Skills Learning Environment

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    Learning environments frequently use gamification to enhance user interactions.Virtual characters with whom players engage in simulated conversations often employ prescripted dialogues; however, free user inputs enable deeper immersion and higher-order cognition. In our learning environment, experts developed a scripted scenario as a sequence of potential actions, and we explore possibilities for enhancing interactions by enabling users to type free inputs that are matched to the pre-scripted statements using Natural Language Processing techniques. In this paper, we introduce a clustering mechanism that provides recommendations for fine-tuning the pre-scripted answers in order to better match user inputs
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