Proceedings of the International Workshop on EuroPLOT Persuasive Technology for Learning, Education and Teaching (IWEPLET 2013)

"This book contains the proceedings of the International Workshop on EuroPLOT Persuasive Technology for Learning, Education and Teaching (IWEPLET) 2013 which was held on 16.-17.September 2013 in Paphos (Cyprus) in conjunction with the EC-TEL conference. The workshop and hence the proceedings are divided in two parts: on Day 1 the EuroPLOT project and its results are introduced, with papers about the specific case studies and their evaluation. On Day 2, peer-reviewed papers are presented which address specific topics and issues going beyond the EuroPLOT scope. This workshop is one of the deliverables (D 2.6) of the EuroPLOT project, which has been funded from November 2010 – October 2013 by the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) of the European Commission through the Lifelong Learning Programme (LLL) by grant #511633. The purpose of this project was to develop and evaluate Persuasive Learning Objects and Technologies (PLOTS), based on ideas of BJ Fogg. The purpose of this workshop is to summarize the findings obtained during this project and disseminate them to an interested audience. Furthermore, it shall foster discussions about the future of persuasive technology and design in the context of learning, education and teaching. The international community working in this area of research is relatively small. Nevertheless, we have received a number of high-quality submissions which went through a peer-review process before being selected for presentation and publication. We hope that the information found in this book is useful to the reader and that more interest in this novel approach of persuasive design for teaching/education/learning is stimulated. We are very grateful to the organisers of EC-TEL 2013 for allowing to host IWEPLET 2013 within their organisational facilities which helped us a lot in preparing this event. I am also very grateful to everyone in the EuroPLOT team for collaborating so effectively in these three years towards creating excellent outputs, and for being such a nice group with a very positive spirit also beyond work. And finally I would like to thank the EACEA for providing the financial resources for the EuroPLOT project and for being very helpful when needed. This funding made it possible to organise the IWEPLET workshop without charging a fee from the participants.

Feature Space Augmentation: Improving Prediction Accuracy of Classical Problems in Cognitive Science and Computer Vison

The prediction accuracy in many classical problems across multiple domains has seen a rise since computational tools such as multi-layer neural nets and complex machine learning algorithms have become widely accessible to the research community. In this research, we take a step back and examine the feature space in two problems from very different domains. We show that novel augmentation to the feature space yields higher performance. Emotion Recognition in Adults from a Control Group: The objective is to quantify the emotional state of an individual at any time using data collected by wearable sensors. We define emotional state as a mixture of amusement, anger, disgust, fear, sadness, anxiety and neutral and their respective levels at any time. The generated model predicts an individual’s dominant state and generates an emotional spectrum, 1x7 vector indicating levels of each emotional state and anxiety. We present an iterative learning framework that alters the feature space uniquely to an individual’s emotion perception, and predicts the emotional state using the individual specific feature space. Hybrid Feature Space for Image Classification: The objective is to improve the accuracy of existing image recognition by leveraging text features from the images. As humans, we perceive objects using colors, dimensions, geometry and any textual information we can gather. Current image recognition algorithms rely exclusively on the first 3 and do not use the textual information. This study develops and tests an approach that trains a classifier on a hybrid text based feature space that has comparable accuracy to the state of the art CNN’s while being significantly inexpensive computationally. Moreover, when combined with CNN’S the approach yields a statistically significant boost in accuracy. Both models are validated using cross validation and holdout validation, and are evaluated against the state of the art

Rafigh: A Living Media System for Motivating Target Application Use for Children

Digital living media systems combine living media such as plants, animals and fungi with computational components. In this dissertation, I respond to the question of how can digital living media systems better motivate children to use target applications (i.e., learning and/or therapeutic applications)? To address this question, I employed a participatory design approach where I incorporated input from children, parents, speech language pathologists and teachers into the design of a new system. Rafigh is a digital embedded system that uses the growth of a living mushrooms colony to provide positive reinforcements to children when they conduct target activities. The growth of the mushrooms is affected by the amount of water administered to them, which in turn corresponds to the time children spend on target applications. I used an iterative design process to develop and evaluate three Rafigh prototypes. The evaluations showed that the system must be robust, customizable, and should include compelling engagement mechanisms to keep the children interested. I evaluated Rafigh using two case studies conducted in participants homes. In each case study, two siblings and their parent interacted with Rafigh over two weeks and the parents identified a series of target applications that Rafigh should motivate the children to use. The study showed that Rafigh motivated the children to spend significantly more time on target applications during the intervention phase and that it successfully engaged one out of two child participants in each case study who showed signs of responsibility, empathy and curiosity towards the living media. The study showed that the majority of participants described the relationship between using target applications and mushrooms growth correctly. Further, Rafigh encouraged more communication and collaboration between the participants. Rafighs slow responsivity did not impact the engagement of one out of two child participants in each case study and might even have contributed to their investment in the project. Finally, Rafighs presence as an ambient physical object allowed users to interact with it freely and as part of their home environment

Review: Development and technical design of tangible user interfaces in wide-field areas of application

A tangible user interface or TUI connects physical objects and digital interfaces. It is more interactive and interesting for users than a classic graphic user interface. This article presents a descriptive overview of TUI's real-world applications sorted into ten main application areas-teaching of traditional subjects, medicine and psychology, programming, database development, music and arts, modeling of 3D objects, modeling in architecture, literature and storytelling, adjustable TUI solutions, and commercial TUI smart toys. The paper focuses on TUI's technical solutions and a description of technical constructions that influences the applicability of TUIs in the real world. Based on the review, the technical concept was divided into two main approaches: the sensory technical concept and technology based on a computer vision algorithm. The sensory technical concept is processed to use wireless technology, sensors, and feedback possibilities in TUI applications. The image processing approach is processed to a marker and markerless approach for object recognition, the use of cameras, and the use of computer vision platforms for TUI applications.Web of Science2113art. no. 425

Psychophysiological analysis of a pedagogical agent and robotic peer for individuals with autism spectrum disorders.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by ongoing problems in social interaction and communication, and engagement in repetitive behaviors. According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an estimated 1 in 68 children in the United States has ASD. Mounting evidence shows that many of these individuals display an interest in social interaction with computers and robots and, in general, feel comfortable spending time in such environments. It is known that the subtlety and unpredictability of people’s social behavior are intimidating and confusing for many individuals with ASD. Computerized learning environments and robots, however, prepare a predictable, dependable, and less complicated environment, where the interaction complexity can be adjusted so as to account for these individuals’ needs. The first phase of this dissertation presents an artificial-intelligence-based tutoring system which uses an interactive computer character as a pedagogical agent (PA) that simulates a human tutor teaching sight word reading to individuals with ASD. This phase examines the efficacy of an instructional package comprised of an autonomous pedagogical agent, automatic speech recognition, and an evidence-based instructional procedure referred to as constant time delay (CTD). A concurrent multiple-baseline across-participants design is used to evaluate the efficacy of intervention. Additionally, post-treatment probes are conducted to assess maintenance and generalization. The results suggest that all three participants acquired and maintained new sight words and demonstrated generalized responding. The second phase of this dissertation describes the augmentation of the tutoring system developed in the first phase with an autonomous humanoid robot which serves the instructional role of a peer for the student. In this tutoring paradigm, the robot adopts a peer metaphor, where its function is to act as a peer. With the introduction of the robotic peer (RP), the traditional dyadic interaction in tutoring systems is augmented to a novel triadic interaction in order to enhance the social richness of the tutoring system, and to facilitate learning through peer observation. This phase evaluates the feasibility and effects of using PA-delivered sight word instruction, based on a CTD procedure, within a small-group arrangement including a student with ASD and the robotic peer. A multiple-probe design across word sets, replicated across three participants, is used to evaluate the efficacy of intervention. The findings illustrate that all three participants acquired, maintained, and generalized all the words targeted for instruction. Furthermore, they learned a high percentage (94.44% on average) of the non-target words exclusively instructed to the RP. The data show that not only did the participants learn nontargeted words by observing the instruction to the RP but they also acquired their target words more efficiently and with less errors by the addition of an observational component to the direct instruction. The third and fourth phases of this dissertation focus on physiology-based modeling of the participants’ affective experiences during naturalistic interaction with the developed tutoring system. While computers and robots have begun to co-exist with humans and cooperatively share various tasks; they are still deficient in interpreting and responding to humans as emotional beings. Wearable biosensors that can be used for computerized emotion recognition offer great potential for addressing this issue. The third phase presents a Bluetooth-enabled eyewear – EmotiGO – for unobtrusive acquisition of a set of physiological signals, i.e., skin conductivity, photoplethysmography, and skin temperature, which can be used as autonomic readouts of emotions. EmotiGO is unobtrusive and sufficiently lightweight to be worn comfortably without interfering with the users’ usual activities. This phase presents the architecture of the device and results from testing that verify its effectiveness against an FDA-approved system for physiological measurement. The fourth and final phase attempts to model the students’ engagement levels using their physiological signals collected with EmotiGO during naturalistic interaction with the tutoring system developed in the second phase. Several physiological indices are extracted from each of the signals. The students’ engagement levels during the interaction with the tutoring system are rated by two trained coders using the video recordings of the instructional sessions. Supervised pattern recognition algorithms are subsequently used to map the physiological indices to the engagement scores. The results indicate that the trained models are successful at classifying participants’ engagement levels with the mean classification accuracy of 86.50%. These models are an important step toward an intelligent tutoring system that can dynamically adapt its pedagogical strategies to the affective needs of learners with ASD

PeppeRecycle: Improving Children’s Attitude Toward Recycling by Playing with a Social Robot

In this paper, we investigate the use of a social robot as an engaging interface of a serious game intended to make children more aware and well disposed towards waste recycle. The game has been designed as a competition between the robot Pepper and a child. During the game, the robot simultaneously challenges and teaches the child how to recycle waste materials. To endow the robot with the capability to play as a game opponent in a real-world context, it is equipped with an image recognition module based on a Convolutional Neural Network to detect and classify the waste material as a child would do, i.e. by simply looking at it. A formal experiment involving 51 primary school students is carried out to evaluate the effectiveness of the game in terms of different factors such as the interaction with the robot, the users’ cognitive and affective dimensions towards ecological sustainability, and the propensity to recycle. The obtained results are encouraging and draw promising scenarios for educational robotics in changing children’s attitudes toward recycling. Indeed Pepper turns out to be positively evaluated by children as a trustful and believable companion and this allows children to be concentrated on the “memorization” task during the game. Moreover, the use of real objects as waste items during the game turns out to be a successful approach not only for perceived learning effectiveness but also for the children’s engagement

The Role of Video Games in Health Care and Medical Training

Tato bakalářská práce se zabývá možným využitím počítačových her a technologiemi s nimi spojených v rámci medicínského vzdělávání a zdravotní péči. Veřejnost často vnímá videohry jako ztrátu času, nebo je využívají pouze pro zábavu. Cílem této práce je proto prokázat jejich využitelnost a pozitivní vliv na již zmínění medicínský vzdělání a zdravotní péči. První část práce pojednává o vlivu her na vzdělávání studentů medicíny, lékařů i pacientů a zároveň jej kriticky analyzuje. Druhá část je zaměřena na využití her ve zdravotní péči, jako je například terapie dětí s autismem nebo dětskou mozkovou obrnou, dále jako možnost redukování bolesti, či způsob objevování nových biochemických látek a struktur. Záměrem práce je zabývat se nejen počítačovými hrami, ale také s nimi spojenými technologiemi jako je virtuální a rozšířená realita, které ještě násobí zkušenosti získané v medicínském vzdělání.This bachelor thesis deals with possible use of videogames and gaming-related technology in medical training and healthcare. General public often consider games as a waste of time or as a purely entertaining. Therefore, the aim of this thesis is to provide evidence of their usefulness and positive impacts on the field of medical training and healthcare. First part of this work refers to and critically analyses the impact of videogames on medical training of students, physicians and even patients. While in the second part the way of using computer games in healthcare is discussed. For example, they can be used in the therapy of children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder or cerebral palsy, also as a way of reducing pain or discovering new biochemical structures. The intention is to cover, apart from gaming, also related technology like virtual reality and augmented intelligence which even enhances the experience of medical training or usage in healthcare.