Evaluation of a novel digital environment for learning medical parasitology.

open access articleEukaryotic parasites represent a serious human health threat requiring health professionals with parasitology skills to counteract this threat. However, recent surveys highlight an erosion of teaching of parasitology in medical and veterinary schools, despite reports of increasing instances of food and water borne parasitic infections. To address this we developed a web-based resource, DMU e-Parasitology®, to facilitate the teaching and learning of parasitology, comprising four sections: theoretical; virtual laboratory; virtual microscopy; virtual clinical case studies. Testing the package was performed using a questionnaire given to ninety-five Pharmacy students in 2017/18 to assess effectiveness of the package as a teaching and learning tool. 89.5% of students reported appropriate acquisition of knowledge of the pathology, prevention and treatment of some parasitic diseases. 82.1% also welcomed the clinical specialism of the package as it helped them to acquire basic diagnostic skills, through learning infective features/morphology of the parasites

Balancing the power of multimedia information retrieval and usability in designing interactive TV

Steady progress in the field of multimedia information retrieval (MMIR) promises a useful set of tools that could provide new usage scenarios and features to enhance the user experience in today s digital media applications. In the interactive TV domain, the simplicity of interaction is more crucial than in any other digital media domain and ultimately determines the success or otherwise of any new applications. Thus when integrating emerging tools like MMIR into interactive TV, the increase in interface complexity and sophistication resulting from these features can easily reduce its actual usability. In this paper we describe a design strategy we developed as a result of our e®ort in balancing the power of emerging multimedia information retrieval techniques and maintaining the simplicity of the interface in interactive TV. By providing multiple levels of interface sophistication in increasing order as a viewer repeatedly presses the same button on their remote control, we provide a layered interface that can accommodate viewers requiring varying degrees of power and simplicity. A series of screen shots from the system we have actually developed and built illustrates how this is achieved

Augmenting conversations through context-aware multimedia retrieval based on speech recognition

Future’s environments will be sensitive and responsive to the presence of people to support them carrying out their everyday life activities, tasks and rituals, in an easy and natural way. Such interactive spaces will use the information and communication technologies to bring the computation into the physical world, in order to enhance ordinary activities of their users. This paper describes a speech-based spoken multimedia retrieval system that can be used to present relevant video-podcast (vodcast) footage, in response to spontaneous speech and conversations during daily life activities. The proposed system allows users to search the spoken content of multimedia files rather than their associated meta-information and let them navigate to the right portion where queried words are spoken by facilitating within-medium searches of multimedia content through a bag-of-words approach. Finally, we have studied the proposed system on different scenarios by using vodcasts in English from various categories, as the targeted multimedia, and discussed how it would enhance people’s everyday life activities by different scenarios including education, entertainment, marketing, news and workplace

Foregrounding accessibility for user experience design

textI am interested in creating generative tools and techniques for designing accessible user experiences for end users. As a user experience designer, I am working on embracing the web accessibility standards and guidelines and including them from the beginning of the User Experience (UX) design process. My projects are directed at facilitating design students and professionals to understand two things: that the broad concept of web accessibility is important, and how they can embed web accessibility into the UX design process at a very early stage. To do this, I used different media (website, posters and videos etc.) to create awareness and educate designers in an interesting, simple and engaging way. In this report, I will discuss the definition and role of accessible design, identify limitations in existing tools and methods, and demonstrate how future designers might research, prototype, analyze, and implement their designs for all users.Desig

Functional genre in Illinois State Government digital documents

Provisions for collecting or archiving digital documents can be informed by knowledge of the genres of documents likely to be encountered. Although different aspects of collecting and curation may classify documents into genres based on differing criteria (e.g., size, file format, subject), this document addresses classification based on the functional role the document plays in state government, akin to (Toms, 2001), but here specifically Illinois State Government (ISG). The classifications listed herein are based on an overview of ISG digital documents, encountered in over nine years of gathering and archiving work with and for the Illinois State Library (ISL), and on discussions with practitioners in cataloging and in government documents librarianship. This report states definitions, and including examples of each such genre. State government documents are interesting in this regard in that they are presumably somewhat comparable to both federal government documents and business documents. Perhaps surprisingly, there are also portions of the State Web that are somewhat less than businesslike, either in tone or in technological proficiency of implementation. In this respect state government digital documents may also be useful approximations to documents produced either personally or by small activities. Having a list of government document genres can inform work in information promulgation (e.g., through website design, or the design of a series of printed materials), and the grouping of documents for digital library or archival purposes.Library of Congress / NDIIPP-2 A6075unpublishednot peer reviewe

Context-awareness in mobile tourist information systems: challenges for user interaction

Context in mobile tourist information systems is typically captured as the current location of the user. Few systems consider the user's interests or wider context of the sights. This paper explores ideas of how to model, observe, evaluate, and exploit a richer notion of context in this application area. We discuss the influence of such a richer context model on the user interaction for both the capturing of context and the context-aware user/device interactions