Machine Body Language: Expressing a Smart Speaker’s Activity with Intelligible Physical Motion

People’s physical movement and body language implicitly convey what they think and feel, are doing or are about to do. In contrast, current smart speakers miss out on this richness of body language, primarily relying on voice commands only. We present QUBI, a dynamic smart speaker that leverages expressive physical motion – stretching, nodding, turning, shrugging, wiggling, pointing and leaning forwards/backwards – to convey cues about its underlying behaviour and activities. We conducted a qualitative Wizard of Oz lab study, in which 12 participants interacted with QUBI in four scripted scenarios. From our study, we distilled six themes: (1) mirroring and mimicking motions; (2) body language to supplement voice instructions; (3) anthropomorphism and personality; (4) audio can trump motion; (5) reaffirming uncertain interpretations to support mutual understanding; and (6) emotional reactions to QUBI’s behaviour. From this, we discuss design implications for future smart speakers

The use of speech recognition technology by people living with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis: a scoping review

More than 80% of people living with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (plwALS) develop difficulties with their speech, affecting communication, self-identity and quality of life. Automatic speech recognition technology (ASR) is becoming a common way to interact with a broad range of devices, to find information and control the environment. ASR can be problematic for people with acquired neurogenic motor speech difficulties (dysarthria). Given that the field is rapidly developing, a scoping review is warranted

Metacognition in Learning

Metacognition skills have been proven to have a positive relationship with learning. The strength of metacognition relies heavily on self-efficacy where a student understands his/her learning style, and the ability to use information gathered and align it with his/her learning style. In addition, knowing what you know and how you know it as a student plays a huge role in knowing what you do not know and linking it with what is close or relevant to it, that you know. It is about having skills and knowledge that empowers you to be an independent learner. Literature on classroom practices show a number of short-comings in diverse areas such as poor teacher knowledge, overcrowded classrooms, and lack of resources for learning. An independent student will strive under such an environment by studying independently, searching for resources, and finding multimodal ways of learning. It is also important to note that naturally, human beings are curious and want to learn in order to conquer their world. Hence, Piaget's work of intellectual autonomy cannot be ignored when exploring metacognition. If learning experiences were ideal and developmental, they would be no need to nurture metacognition. Unfortunately, the education systems remove students' curiosity by bringing fake environments into learning that impede creation and imagination. This book emphasises the power of metacognition at different levels of learning. It can be seen as a parallel intervention approach, with expanded knowledge on how to extend existing skills for young children, which is a pre-intervention. Authors in this book bring diverse viewpoints from diverse fields on how to nurture metacognition, thus giving the reader an opportunity to borrow strategies from other fields. This contribution is a mixture of empirical contributions and opinion pieces informed by review of literature

Useful shortcuts: Using design heuristics for consent and permission in smart home devices

Prior research in smart home privacy highlights significant issues with how users understand, permit, and consent to data use. Some of the underlying issues point to unclear data protection regulations, lack of design principles, and dark patterns. In this paper, we explore heuristics (also called “mental shortcuts” or “rules of thumb”) as a means to address security and privacy design challenges in smart homes. First, we systematically analyze an existing body of data on smart homes to derive a set of heuristics for the design of consent and permission. Second, we apply these heuristics in four participatory co-design workshops (n = 14) and report on their use. Third, we analyze the use of the heuristics through thematic analysis highlighting heuristic application, purpose, and effectiveness in successful and unsuccessful design outcomes. We conclude with a discussion of the wider challenges, opportunities, and future work for improving design practices for consent in smart homes

A New Trend in Pronunciation Teaching

English pronunciation training helps learners speak more clearly and communicate more smoothly. Online pronunciation learning, which helps connect teachers and students from all parts of the world, has been well-supported by the rapid development of technology. However, teachers need to apply appropriate pedagogical methods to ensure the effectiveness of online pronunciation instruction. This paper overviews specific strategies which could be employed for teaching English pronunciation in a video-based virtual classroom

A social constructionist analysis of talk in episodes of psychiatric student nurse-psychiatric client community clinic based interaction.

Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2007.The study seeks to explore and to offer a critical account for the 'discursive doings' of student psychiatric nmsing practice as they are jointly constructed in the episodes of conversation between the nmse and client-speakers within the context of the communitybased psychiatric clinic. The study is built around a social constructionist framework and is concerned with the analysis of the discursive activities present within seven (7) transttibed, audio-recordings of student nurse-psychiatric client interactions. A thick and sometimes critical description of three of the contextual forces back grounding/foregrounding the discursive processes of psychiatric nursing is given. These include the public health psychiatric care context, the problem-solving approach of the undergraduate psychiatric nursing curriculum and the assumption and effects of modem psychiatric nursing theory. The first level of analysis is an aspect of the methodology and offers a descriptive and interpretive analysis of the talk in the texts. Various conversational discourse analytic tools were used here to transform talk into text and to develop the starting point for the subsequent positioning theory analysis. The second level of analysis is a positioning theory analysis of happenings within these texts. Some of the textual descriptions generated in the first level of analysis are used to illuminate and to add substance to the accounts of these positioning theory happenings. The analysis has shown that from a social constructionist positioning perspective, the unfolding nurse-client dialogue in these texts operates in four potentially distinct ways - highlighting, herding, hectoring and heeding - with specific effects for their going on together in conditions of relationship. These ways of talking are shown to be contrary to the person-eentered rhetoric of modem psychiatric nursing and more aligned with the bio-medical format of talk in helping contexts. Can these activities be dismissed as non-nursing activities? The implications for a modem psychiatric nursing theory that holds the person-centred approach to be its quintessential essence are considered and a number of ideas for how client-authorised expressions may be jointly manifest in conversations situated in this practice context are offered