Effects of Task Experience and Layout on Learning from Text and Pictures with or without Unnecessary Picture Descriptions

The presentation of extraneous (i.e., irrelevant or unnecessary) information may hamper learning with multimedia. The present study examined whether people can learn to ignore unnecessary information with increasing experience with the task and whether this depends on the layout of that information. In two experiments, participants learned about the process of mitosis from a multimedia slideshow, with each slide presenting a combination of expository text and a picture on one of the stages in the process. Slides either contained no unnecessary text (control condition) or unnecessary text (i.e., merely describing the picture) either integrated in the picture (integrated condition) or presented underneath the picture (separated condition). Knowledge about the studied mitosis phase was tested immediately after each slide using a cloze test. Across Experiments 1 and 2, we did not find a reliable negative effect of the unnecessary text on cloze test performance. As a result, the question of whether task experience would reduce or eliminate that negative effect could not be answered. The eye movement data did confirm, however, that participants attended less to the unnecessary information with increasing task experience, suggesting that students can adapt their study strategy and learn to ignore unnecessary information

Effects of Task Experience on Attention to Extraneous Information during Multimedia Learning

The aim of this dissertation is to provide an answer to the following questions: 1) Does the negative effect of extraneous information on learning decrease or disappear with increasing task experience? 2) Does this effect arise because learners start to ignore the extraneous information? These two questions are addressed both for irrelevant and unnecessary information presentation. An important aspect of this dissertation is the use of eye-tracking methodology to address the second question, which can provide insight into the perceptual and cognitive processes that underlie the effects of different multimedia materials on learning outcomes (Van Gog & Scheiter, 2010)

Robot Navigation in Unseen Spaces using an Abstract Map

Human navigation in built environments depends on symbolic spatial information which has unrealised potential to enhance robot navigation capabilities. Information sources such as labels, signs, maps, planners, spoken directions, and navigational gestures communicate a wealth of spatial information to the navigators of built environments; a wealth of information that robots typically ignore. We present a robot navigation system that uses the same symbolic spatial information employed by humans to purposefully navigate in unseen built environments with a level of performance comparable to humans. The navigation system uses a novel data structure called the abstract map to imagine malleable spatial models for unseen spaces from spatial symbols. Sensorimotor perceptions from a robot are then employed to provide purposeful navigation to symbolic goal locations in the unseen environment. We show how a dynamic system can be used to create malleable spatial models for the abstract map, and provide an open source implementation to encourage future work in the area of symbolic navigation. Symbolic navigation performance of humans and a robot is evaluated in a real-world built environment. The paper concludes with a qualitative analysis of human navigation strategies, providing further insights into how the symbolic navigation capabilities of robots in unseen built environments can be improved in the future.Comment: 15 pages, published in IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems (http://doi.org/10.1109/TCDS.2020.2993855), see https://btalb.github.io/abstract_map/ for access to softwar

Life editing: Third-party perspectives on lifelog content

Lifelog collections digitally capture and preserve personal experiences and can be mined to reveal insights and understandings of individual significance. These rich data sources also offer opportunities for learning and discovery by motivated third parties. We employ a custom-designed storytelling application in constructing meaningful lifelog summaries from third-party perspectives. This storytelling initiative was implemented as a core component in a university media-editing course. We present promising results from a preliminary study conducted to evaluate the utility and potential of our approach in creatively interpreting a unique experiential dataset

Final MA Portfolio

This portfolio is a compilation of graduate research and writing completed as the capstone project for the Master of Arts in English degree with a specialization in professional writing and rhetoric. The first selection is a research paper that reviews how embellishments in graphical representations and infographics affect viewer perception. The second research paper is a content analysis that explores the extent to which visual metaphors are used in ISO public information graphical symbols. The third research paper explores how to create effective video software tutorials and reorganizes existing guidelines into eighteen distinct guidelines in three major categories: accessibility, cognitive design, and affective design. The final selection is a teaching guide geared toward an introductory undergraduate technical writing course

Comprehension and the silent reader

Dr Elspeth Jajdelska's work on the rise of silent reading in the 18th century has shown that writers who assume a silent reader, as almost all writers do in the present day, construct their texts differently from those who write for readers to speak the text aloud to themselves or an audience, as almost all writers did before the 18th century.Elspeth Jajdelska's work explains in detail exactly which kinds of textual features are likely to be difficult for people (both now and in the past) who have learned the mechanics of reading but find it hard to follow texts written for silent readers. These findings arose in an academic field unconnected to educational studies and this knowledge exchange project was established to explore how the research can be made useful to teachers. The project was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council

The design and evaluation of non-visual information systems for blind users

This research was motivated by the sudden increase of hypermedia information (such as that found on CD-ROMs and on the World Wide Web), which was not initially accessible to blind people, although offered significant advantages over traditional braille and audiotape information. Existing non-visual information systems for blind people had very different designs and functionality, but none of them provided what was required according to user requirements studies: an easy-to-use non-visual interface to hypermedia material with a range of input devices for blind students. Furthermore, there was no single suitable design and evaluation methodology which could be used for the development of non-visual information systems. The aims of this research were therefore: (1) to develop a generic, iterative design and evaluation methodology consisting of a number of techniques suitable for formative evaluation of non-visual interfaces; (2) to explore non-visual interaction possibilities for a multimodal hypermedia browser for blind students based on user requirements; and (3) to apply the evaluation methodology to non-visual information systems at different stages of their development. The methodology developed and recommended consists of a range of complementary design and evaluation techniques, and successfully allowed the systematic development of prototype non-visual interfaces for blind users by identifying usability problems and developing solutions. Three prototype interfaces are described: the design and evaluation of two versions of a hypermedia browser; and an evaluation of a digital talking book. Recommendations made from the evaluations for an effective non-visual interface include the provision of a consistent multimodal interface, non-speech sounds for information and feedback, a range of simple and consistent commands for reading, navigation, orientation and output control, and support features. This research will inform developers of similar systems for blind users, and in addition, the methodology and design ideas are considered sufficiently generic, but also sufficiently detailed, that the findings could be applied successfully to the development of non-visual interfaces of any type

Evaluating tag-based information access in image collections

The availability of social tags has greatly enhanced access to information. Tag clouds have emerged as a new "social" way to find and visualize information, providing both one-click access to information and a snapshot of the "aboutness" of a tagged collection. A range of research projects explored and compared different tag artifacts for information access ranging from regular tag clouds to tag hierarchies. At the same time, there is a lack of user studies that compare the effectiveness of different types of tag-based browsing interfaces from the users point of view. This paper contributes to the research on tag-based information access by presenting a controlled user study that compared three types of tag-based interfaces on two recognized types of search tasks - lookup and exploratory search. Our results demonstrate that tag-based browsing interfaces significantly outperform traditional search interfaces in both performance and user satisfaction. At the same time, the differences between the two types of tag-based browsing interfaces explored in our study are not as clear. Copyright 2012 ACM