Leveraging facebook’s open graph to develop an environmental persuasive application

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia InformáticaSocial networking sites persuade millions of users each day to adopt specific behaviors. Using the persuasive principles inherent to these sites to increase environmental awareness and reduce our ecological footprint can be challenging but certainly worthy. The DEAP project has already invested time and resources to address persuasion through different devices for a broad audience. However, there are still many obstacles when it comes to such a delicate subject as people’s routines. For many years, social factors have prevented people from adopting a way of living friendlier to our Environment. Whether it is due to lack of proper knowledge about this topic or simply because they are not willing to change, the truth is that we are eventually reaching a point where it will be too late to keep our planet as we know it. Consequently, the time has arrived when there is great need for a platform to bring existing efforts together no matter where they come from but the goal they share: change incorrect behaviors towards environmental sustainability. Towards this ambitious goal a board game was developed and integrated in Facebook capable of merging third-party applications and an important and valuable basis for future research in the field of persuasion

Interface design of a mobile application oriented to packaging sustainability

Trabalho de projetoEste projeto tem como principal finalidade reunir informações sobre materiais utilizados em embalagens e suas características relacionadas com a sustentabilidade, a fim de serem aplicadas na aplicação móvel que é desenvolvida em um estágio futuro. Metodologia e técnicas de User Experience Design (UX) são também descritas, sendo fundamentais ao processo de desenvolvimento. Um resumo sobre comportamento humano também é abordado, assim como a criação de uma categorização simples que classifica diferentes tipos de embalagens de acordo com seus níveis de sustentabilidade. O propósito deste projeto é idealizar, desenhar e prototipar uma aplicação móvel de modo a simplificar este tema e assim disponibilizar futuramente esta aplicação ao público em geral. Uma série de técnicas de UX e seus resultados estão disponíveis neste documento para servir como suporte ao desenvolvimento da aplicação. O produto final é um protótipo parcialmente funcional pronto a ser programado. A aplicação demonstra um potencial significativo com impactos positivos sobre o meio-ambiente através de seus objetivos.This project firstly has the purpose of gathering information about packaging materials and their characteristics related to sustainability in order to be applied in a mobile application that is developed in a future stage. Methodology and applied User Experience Design (UX) techniques are described as well, as those are fundamental to the application development process. An overview of people’s behaviour is also approached, as well as the creation of a simple categorised system to classify different packaging types according to how sustainable they are. The purpose of this project is to simplify the theme and make it available to the general public through the proposed mobile application. Series of UX techniques and its results are available in this document in order to support the application development. The final product is a partially functional prototype ready to be developed in terms of coding. The application shows significant potential for positive environmental impacts through its purpose

SciTech News Volume 71, No. 2 (2017)

Columns and Reports From the Editor 3 Division News Science-Technology Division 5 Chemistry Division 8 Engineering Division 9 Aerospace Section of the Engineering Division 12 Architecture, Building Engineering, Construction and Design Section of the Engineering Division 14 Reviews Sci-Tech Book News Reviews 16 Advertisements IEEE

How to design for persistence and retention in MOOCs?

Design of educational interventions is typically carried out following a design cycle involving phases of investigation, conceptualization, prototyping, implementation, execution and evaluation. This cycle can be applied at different levels of granularity e.g. learning activity, module, course or programme. In this paper we consider an aspect of learner behavior that can be critical to the success of many MOOCs i.e. their persistence to study, and the related theme of learner retention. We reflect on the impact that consideration of these can have on design decisions at different stages in the design cycle with the aim of en-hancing MOOC design in relation to learner persistence and retention, with particular attention to the European context

Designing and evaluating participatory cyber-infrastructure systems for multi-scale citizen science

2010 Summer.Includes bibliographical references.To view the abstract, please see the full text of the document

Facilitating immersion, engagement and flow in multi-user virtual environments

Virtual worlds are providing myriad opportunities for the development of innovative curricula for tertiary educators. They provide a virtual meeting space for those students and lecturers who are geographically remote from one another, rendering distance irrelevant and facilitating the formation of community. This paper will look at those factors - physical, social, virtual and those related to pedagogy - which facilitate immersion in virtual worlds; that suspension of disbelief which generates the feeling of presence or 'being there', crucial to promoting student engagement and ultimately, flow

Developing sustainable business models for institutions’ provision of open educational resources: Learning from OpenLearn users’ motivations and experiences

Universities across the globe have, for some time, been exploring the possibilities for achieving public benefit and generating business and visibility through releasing and sharing open educational resources (OER). Many have written about the need to develop sustainable and profitable business models around the production and release of OER. Downes (2006), for example, has questioned the financial sustainability of OER production at scale. Many of the proposed business models focus on OER’s value in generating revenue and detractors of OER have questioned whether they are in competition with formal education. This paper reports on a study intended to broaden the conversation about OER business models to consider the motivations and experiences of OER users as the basis for making a better informed decision about whether OER and formal learning are competitive or complementary with each other. The study focused on OpenLearn - the Open University’s (OU) web-based platform for OER, which hosts hundreds of online courses and videos and is accessed by over 3,000,000 users a year. A large scale survey and follow-up interviews with OpenLearn users worldwide revealed that university provided OER can offer learners a bridge to formal education, allowing them to try out a subject before registering on a formal course and to build confidence in their abilities as learners. In addition, it was found that using OER during formal paid-for study can improve learners’ performance and self-reliance, leading to increased retention and satisfaction with the learning experience