Heuristic Evaluation for Serious Immersive Games and M-instruction

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016. Two fast growing areas for technology-enhanced learning are serious games and mobile instruction (M-instruction or M-Learning). Serious games are ones that are meant to be more than just entertainment. They have a serious use to educate or promote other types of activity. Immersive Games frequently involve many players interacting in a shared rich and complex-perhaps web-based-mixed reality world, where their circumstances will be multi and varied. Their reality may be augmented and often self-composed, as in a user-defined avatar in a virtual world. M-instruction and M-Learning is learning on the move; much of modern computer use is via smart devices, pads, and laptops. People use these devices all over the place and thus it is a natural extension to want to use these devices where they are to learn. This presents a problem if we wish to evaluate the effectiveness of the pedagogic media they are using. We have no way of knowing their situation, circumstance, education background and motivation, or potentially of the customisation of the final software they are using. Getting to the end user itself may also be problematic; these are learning environments that people will dip into at opportune moments. If access to the end user is hard because of location and user self-personalisation, then one solution is to look at the software before it goes out. Heuristic Evaluation allows us to get User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) experts to reflect on the software before it is deployed. The effective use of heuristic evaluation with pedagogical software [1] is extended here, with existing Heuristics Evaluation Methods that make the technique applicable to Serious Immersive Games and mobile instruction (M-instruction). We also consider how existing Heuristic Methods may be adopted. The result represents a new way of making this methodology applicable to this new developing area of learning technology

Location-based and contextual mobile learning. A STELLAR Small-Scale Study

This study starts from several inputs that the partners have collected from previous and current running research projects and a workshop organised at the STELLAR Alpine Rendevous 2010. In the study, several steps have been taken, firstly a literature review and analysis of existing systems; secondly, mobile learning experts have been involved in a concept mapping study to identify the main challenges that can be solved via mobile learning; and thirdly, an identification of educational patterns based on these examples has been done. Out of this study the partners aim to develop an educational framework for contextual learning as a unifying approach in the field. Therefore one of our central research questions is: how can we investigate, theorise, model and support contextual learning

Utilization of Flow Concept for Digital Service Requirements Prioritization

We argue that the concept of flow can be useful in investigating how requirements for digital services can be analyzed. We apply Novak et al\u27s (2000) framework to analyze how flow can be utilized for requirements prioritization for digital services. Our findings indicate that the flow can be very useful for requirements development. Furthermore, the findings show that the flow can be potentially used for understanding experiential- and task-oriented user activities. Therefore, we conclude that the flow should be considered as a service requirements prioritization metric not only for digital services dominated by hedonic utility needs by users, but with all digital services. This calls for further research in service requirements method development and on how flow impacts user experience

OpenLearn and knowledge maps for language learning

This chapter presents new methodologies designed to facilitate language acquisition in open learning communities via open educational resources and knowledge mapping. It specifically focuses on the OpenLearn project developed by the Open University. This offers a virtual learning environment based on Moodle platform with free educational materials and knowledge media tools such as the instant messaging MSG, the video webconference FlashMeeting and the knowledge mapping software tool Compendium. In this work, these technologies and mapping techniques are introduced in order to promote open language learning. Ways in which teachers and students can make use of these OpenLearn tools and resources are discussed and some benefits fully described

A model for hypermedia learning environments based on electronic books

Designers of hypermedia learning environments could take advantage of a theoretical scheme which takes into account various kinds of learning activities and solves some of the problems associated with them. In this paper, we present a model which inherits a number of characteristics from hypermedia and electronic books. It can provide designers with the tools for creating hypermedia learning systems, by allowing the elements and functions involved in the definition of a specific application to be formally represented A practical example, CESAR, a hypermedia learning environment for hearing‐impaired children, is presented, and some conclusions derived from the use of the model are also shown