Controlled Experimentation in Naturalistic Mobile Settings

Performing controlled user experiments on small devices in naturalistic mobile settings has always proved to be a difficult undertaking for many Human Factors researchers. Difficulties exist, not least, because mimicking natural small device usage suffers from a lack of unobtrusive data to guide experimental design, and then validate that the experiment is proceeding naturally.Here we use observational data to derive a set of protocols and a simple checklist of validations which can be built into the design of any controlled experiment focused on the user interface of a small device. These, have been used within a series of experimental designs to measure the utility and application of experimental software. The key-point is the validation checks -- based on the observed behaviour of 400 mobile users -- to ratify that a controlled experiment is being perceived as natural by the user. While the design of the experimental route which the user follows is a major factor in the experimental setup, without check validations based on unobtrusive observed data there can be no certainty that an experiment designed to be natural is actually progressing as the design implies.Comment: 12 pages, 3 table

Towards Interactive, Incremental Programming of ROS Nodes

Writing software for controlling robots is a complex task, usually demanding command of many programming languages and requiring significant experimentation. We believe that a bottom-up development process that complements traditional component- and MDSD-based approaches can facilitate experimentation. We propose the use of an internal DSL providing both a tool to interactively create ROS nodes and a behaviour-replacement mechanism to interactively reshape existing ROS nodes by wrapping the external interfaces (the publish/subscribe topics), dynamically controlled using the Python command line interface.Comment: Presented at DSLRob 2014 (arXiv:cs/1411.7148

Modeling building semantics: providing feedback and sustainability

Even minor changes in user activity can bring about significant energy savings within built space. Many building performance assessment methods have been developed, however these often disregard the impact of user behavior (i.e. the social, cultural and organizational aspects of the building). Building users currently have limited means of determining how sustainable they are, in context of the specific building structure and/or when compared to other users performing similar activities, it is therefore easy for users to dismiss their energy use. To support sustainability, buildings must be able to monitor energy use, identify areas of potential change in the context of user activity and provide contextually relevant information to facilitate persuasion management. If the building is able to provide users with detailed information about how specific user activity that is wasteful, this should provide considerable motivation to implement positive change. This paper proposes using a dynamic and temporal semantic model, to populate information within a model of persuasion, to manage user change. By semantically mapping a building, and linking this to persuasion management we suggest that: i) building energy use can be monitored and analyzed over time; ii) persuasive management can be facilitated to move user activity towards sustainability

Second language learning in the context of MOOCs

Massive Open Online Courses are becoming popular educational vehicles through which universities reach out to non-traditional audiences. Many enrolees hail from other countries and cultures, and struggle to cope with the English language in which these courses are invariably offered. Moreover, most such learners have a strong desire and motivation to extend their knowledge of academic English, particularly in the specific area addressed by the course. Online courses provide a compelling opportunity for domain-specific language learning. They supply a large corpus of interesting linguistic material relevant to a particular area, including supplementary images (slides), audio and video. We contend that this corpus can be automatically analysed, enriched, and transformed into a resource that learners can browse and query in order to extend their ability to understand the language used, and help them express themselves more fluently and eloquently in that domain. To illustrate this idea, an existing online corpus-based language learning tool (FLAX) is applied to a Coursera MOOC entitled Virology 1: How Viruses Work, offered by Columbia University

Innovative Teaching and Digital Literacy in Preschool. App Content Analysis and Experimental Case Studies in a Sociological Perspective

The objective of this article is to illustrate, from the theoretical and methodological perspective, the construction of an experimental process of a “digital education app” in several preschools in the municipality of Rome. The general objective the project fits into is related to a sociological analysis, based on the relationship between theory and empirical research, of the effects of introducing digital media into preschool didactics. Preschools are a privileged site for observing and analyzing the formation and development of children’s capabilities (Nussbaum, 2000), since the plasticity of the child’s thought begins to be configured as early as preschool and evolves progressively taking into account the perceptive, sociocultural and behavioural conditions emerging from different educational agencies (Piaget, Inhelder, 1950). The article refers to the research project of the Mediamonitor Minori Observatory of the Sapienza University of Rome entitled “Media Usage in Pre-school. Analysis and Evaluation of the Influence of Digital Media on the Socialization of Children between 0-6”. The article retraces in particular the stages of the research strategy designed to structure a formative, experimental protocol to be experimented in some case studies in Rome and illustrates the main results

FORGE: An eLearning Framework for Remote Laboratory Experimentation on FIRE Testbed Infrastructure

The Forging Online Education through FIRE (FORGE) initiative provides educators and learners in higher education with access to world-class FIRE testbed infrastructure. FORGE supports experimentally driven research in an eLearning environment by complementing traditional classroom and online courses with interactive remote laboratory experiments. The project has achieved its objectives by defining and implementing a framework called FORGEBox. This framework offers the methodology, environment, tools and resources to support the creation of HTML-based online educational material capable accessing virtualized and physical FIRE testbed infrastruc- ture easily. FORGEBox also captures valuable quantitative and qualitative learning analytic information using questionnaires and Learning Analytics that can help optimise and support student learning. To date, FORGE has produced courses covering a wide range of networking and communication domains. These are freely available from FORGEBox.eu and have resulted in over 24,000 experiments undertaken by more than 1,800 students across 10 countries worldwide. This work has shown that the use of remote high- performance testbed facilities for hands-on remote experimentation can have a valuable impact on the learning experience for both educators and learners. Additionally, certain challenges in developing FIRE-based courseware have been identified, which has led to a set of recommendations in order to support the use of FIRE facilities for teaching and learning purposes