Understanding Evidence-Based Interventions for Cross-Cultural Group Work: A Learning Analytics Perspective

As the numbers of international students worldwide continue to rise, one common challenge is how best to socially integrate diverse groups of students. Indeed, research demonstrates that many students form social and learning relationships with those from the same cultural background, despite benefits of cross-cultural communication. This lack of social cohesion negatively affects students, particularly when it comes to their perceptions of collaborative group work. However, few studies have analysed measurable student behaviours in group work, such as with learning analytics, to determine how culture and existing social networks influence measurable differences in contributions. Similarly, little is known about what evidence-based interventions lead to more equal participation between diverse students. In this research, learning analytics is combined with social network analysis to determine the role of social connections on group work participation, and highlight replicable interventions that can help promote social cohesion in diverse classrooms

Data-Driven Evaluation of In-Vehicle Information Systems

Today’s In-Vehicle Information Systems (IVISs) are featurerich systems that provide the driver with numerous options for entertainment, information, comfort, and communication. Drivers can stream their favorite songs, read reviews of nearby restaurants, or change the ambient lighting to their liking. To do so, they interact with large center stack touchscreens that have become the main interface between the driver and IVISs. To interact with these systems, drivers must take their eyes off the road which can impair their driving performance. This makes IVIS evaluation critical not only to meet customer needs but also to ensure road safety. The growing number of features, the distraction caused by large touchscreens, and the impact of driving automation on driver behavior pose significant challenges for the design and evaluation of IVISs. Traditionally, IVISs are evaluated qualitatively or through small-scale user studies using driving simulators. However, these methods are not scalable to the growing number of features and the variety of driving scenarios that influence driver interaction behavior. We argue that data-driven methods can be a viable solution to these challenges and can assist automotive User Experience (UX) experts in evaluating IVISs. Therefore, we need to understand how data-driven methods can facilitate the design and evaluation of IVISs, how large amounts of usage data need to be visualized, and how drivers allocate their visual attention when interacting with center stack touchscreens. In Part I, we present the results of two empirical studies and create a comprehensive understanding of the role that data-driven methods currently play in the automotive UX design process. We found that automotive UX experts face two main conflicts: First, results from qualitative or small-scale empirical studies are often not valued in the decision-making process. Second, UX experts often do not have access to customer data and lack the means and tools to analyze it appropriately. As a result, design decisions are often not user-centered and are based on subjective judgments rather than evidence-based customer insights. Our results show that automotive UX experts need data-driven methods that leverage large amounts of telematics data collected from customer vehicles. They need tools to help them visualize and analyze customer usage data and computational methods to automatically evaluate IVIS designs. In Part II, we present ICEBOAT, an interactive user behavior analysis tool for automotive user interfaces. ICEBOAT processes interaction data, driving data, and glance data, collected over-the-air from customer vehicles and visualizes it on different levels of granularity. Leveraging our multi-level user behavior analysis framework, it enables UX experts to effectively and efficiently evaluate driver interactions with touchscreen-based IVISs concerning performance and safety-related metrics. In Part III, we investigate drivers’ multitasking behavior and visual attention allocation when interacting with center stack touchscreens while driving. We present the first naturalistic driving study to assess drivers’ tactical and operational self-regulation with center stack touchscreens. Our results show significant differences in drivers’ interaction and glance behavior in response to different levels of driving automation, vehicle speed, and road curvature. During automated driving, drivers perform more interactions per touchscreen sequence and increase the time spent looking at the center stack touchscreen. These results emphasize the importance of context-dependent driver distraction assessment of driver interactions with IVISs. Motivated by this we present a machine learning-based approach to predict and explain the visual demand of in-vehicle touchscreen interactions based on customer data. By predicting the visual demand of yet unseen touchscreen interactions, our method lays the foundation for automated data-driven evaluation of early-stage IVIS prototypes. The local and global explanations provide additional insights into how design artifacts and driving context affect drivers’ glance behavior. Overall, this thesis identifies current shortcomings in the evaluation of IVISs and proposes novel solutions based on visual analytics and statistical and computational modeling that generate insights into driver interaction behavior and assist UX experts in making user-centered design decisions

Expert chess memory: Revisiting the chunking hypothesis

After reviewing the relevant theory on chess expertise, this paper re-examines experimentally the finding of Chase and Simon (1973a) that the differences in ability of chess players at different skill levels to copy and to recall positions are attributable to the experts' storage of thousands of chunks (patterned clusters of pieces) in long-term memory. Despite important differences in the experimental apparatus, the data of the present experiments regarding latencies and chess relations between successively placed pieces are highly correlated with those of Chase and Simon. We conclude that the 2-second inter-chunk interval used to define chunk boundaries is robust, and that chunks have psychological reality. We discuss the possible reasons why Masters in our new study used substantially larger chunks than the Master of the 1973 study, and extend the chunking theory to take account of the evidence for large retrieval structures (templates) in long-term memory

The urban screen as a socialising platform: exploring the role of place within the urban space

In this paper we explore shared encounters mediated by technologies in the urban space. We investigate aspects that influence the interactions between people and people and people and their surroundings when technology is introduced in the urban space. We highlight the importance of space and the role of place in providing temporal and spatial mechanisms facilitating different types of social interactions and shared encounters. An emperical experiment was condeucted with a prototype that was implemented in the form of a digital screen, embeded in the physical surrounding in selected locations with low, medium and high pedestrian flows in the heritage City of Bath, UK. The aim is to create a novel urban experience that triggers shared encounters among friends, observers or strangers. Using the body as an interaface, the screen acted as a non-traditional interface and a facilitator between people and people and people and their surrounding environment. Here we outline early findings from deploying the digital screen as a socialiasing platform in a city context. We describe the user experience and demonstrate how people move, congregate and socialize around the digital surface. We illustrate the impact of the spatial and syntactical properties on the type of shared interactions in and highlight related issues. The initial findings indicated that introducing a digital platform as a public interactive installation in the urban space may provide a stage for emergent social interactions among various people and motivate users to actively and collaboratively play with the media. However, situating the digital platform in various locations, and depending on the context, might generate diverse and unpredicted social behaviours designers might be unaware of. In this respect we believe that the final experience is shaped by interconnection of structural, social, cultural, temporal and perhaps personal elements. We conclude by mentioning briefly our on going work

Spirituality within the Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment Process

In this chapter, Ellingson argues that the comprehensive geriatric assessment ( CGA) , which is used in the development of treatment plans for elderly individuals in poor health, has failed to acknowledge the import of some aspects of the elderly patient\u27s life experiences. Ellingson uses case study analysis to demonstrate the significance of spiritual and religious beliefs and practices and suggests that the CGA model should be expanded to include explicit coverage of spirituality and religious issues

Revisitation Patterns and Disorientation

The non-linear structure of web sites may cause users to become disorientated. In this paper we describe the results of a pilot study to find measures of user revisitation patterns that help in predicting disorientation

A qualitative exploration of the effect of visual field loss on daily life in home-dwelling stroke survivors

Objective: To explore the effect of visual field loss on the daily life of community-dwelling stroke survivors. Design: A qualitative interview study. Participants: Adult stroke survivors with visual field loss of at least six months’ duration. Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with a non-purposive sample of 12 stroke survivors in their own homes. These were recorded, transcribed verbatim and analyzed with the framework method, using an inductive approach. Results: Two key analytical themes emerged. ‘Perception, experience and knowledge’ describes participant’s conflicted experience of having knowledge of their impaired vision but lacking perception of that visual field loss and operating under the assumption that they were viewing an intact visual scene when engaged in activities. Inability to recognize and deal with visual difficulties, and experiencing the consequences, contributed to their fear and loss of self-confidence. ‘Avoidance and adaptation’ were two typologies of participant response to visual field loss. Initially, all participants consciously avoided activities. Some later adapted to vision loss using self-directed head and eye scanning techniques. Conclusions: Visual field loss has a marked impact on stroke survivors. Stroke survivors lack perception of their visual loss in everyday life, resulting in fear and loss of confidence. Activity avoidance is a common response, but in some, it is replaced by self-initiated adaptive techniques