Towards a person-centric interface for information re-finding and sharing tasks

After the identification of the role that the connections between people and information can play in supporting personal information tasks, some means of exploiting these connections to support information re-finding and sharing were considered. Some past research has examined the use of people in relation to information to perform information tasks, primarily applied to information re-finding and sharing. This small body of work, however, has not explored in depth a basis for how best to design interfaces focused on people, to support users in performing personal information tasks in this manner. Two further studies were therefore conducted to explore how to design interfaces that support a greater focus on people -- interfaces that are 'person-centric' in nature. The first of these studies provided a basis for how to design interfaces focused on the use of people for personal information tasks, and the second evaluated a 'person-centric' design based on the findings of the prior study. Designing interfaces that provide a means of accessing or sharing information through interaction with personal contacts requires a means of organising and representing those contacts. Just as the diary study revealed some of the prominent dimensions that information is recalled and ordered by, the design of 'person-centric' interfaces requires a similar understanding of what dimensions influence how to structure and order contacts. In order to design an interface based on supporting information tasks using people as a central component of the interface, how people think about relationships between their contacts and how people would choose to represent their contacts was examined. This was approached in two ways. First, through use of a modified repertory grid method, whereby participants made comparisons between many combinations of their own personal contacts to elicit constructs which described the different forms of relationships they perceived between their contacts. Second, through participants making free-hand drawings that illustrated how they would choose to represent all of their contacts. From analysing this data a categorisation of the different forms of contact groups people perceived was generated. Applying this to the data revealed which forms of expressing relationships were most prevalent, which at the highest level were those related to organisations, locations, relationship types and events. Different forms of representations of contacts, which each structured the contacts in different ways, were also identified from the data. These representations each emphasised different aspects such as overlaps between groups of contacts, the relative importance of contacts, the location of contacts, and the links between contacts. A prototype 'person-centric' system was then developed to evaluate a range of 'person-centric' design concepts for supporting people in performing information sharing and re-finding tasks. This incorporated design ideas based on examination of the re-finding behaviours from the diary study and the examination of contact relationships and representations. The prototype system extracted contacts with whom the user had reciprocated contact from their email and Facebook accounts, as well as related messages, files and links. The user was then able to use the system to create groups of contacts, which could then later be used to aid performing information sharing and re-finding tasks through a series of different 'person-centric' interface presentations. The structure of these presentations could be changed, re-ordered, and filtered based on the results of the repertory grid and free-hand diagramming, which provided a basis for understanding different ways people may wish to order or filter contacts, and the different ways to structure contacts in an interface. The prototype was evaluated in two parts. In the first part the process of contact grouping was studied, and in the second part the design ideas and the use of people as a primary unit of interaction was evaluated. In both parts of the evaluation participants performed think-aloud protocol while interacting with the interfaces to perform the tasks, which was recorded using audio and video capture. In the evaluation of the contact grouping two grouping interface designs were used. The participant's task with the interfaces was to group all of their contacts in each interface condition. The aim of this was to explore what constituted a meaningful contact group and to understand what role interface design played in this. In the re-finding and information sharing interface evaluation participants were questioned about their personal data in order to generate tasks to re-find information, or items to share from their personal data using the prototype system. Using the identified information items, tasks were set using four different representations that supported information sharing and re-finding. These tasks aimed to evaluate the utility of the different 'person-centric' design concepts that had been identified. Following both parts of the evaluation interviews were conducted to understand the experiences and preferences of the participants in using the different interfaces. From the two part evaluation, the decision-making processes of constructing groups and the factors that influence that process were outlined, as well as preferences and behaviour regarding different features of the interfaces that supported performing the information tasks. Evaluation of design ideas from the previous two studies through the prototype confirmed the value of utilising connections made between people and information when re-finding information, and allowed factors that have implications for 'person-centric' interface design to be identified in relation to how contacts and groups should be represented. Through its examination of the use of connections that are made between people and information when performing personal information tasks and the representation of people in interface design, this thesis provides a greater degree of understanding of typical information re-finding behaviours, the representation and relationships of people in interfaces for performing information tasks, the process of constructing contact groups and what constitutes a meaningful contact grouping. It contributes guidelines that inform how to design 'person-centric' interfaces in relation to the structure of representations, ordering and filtering of contacts, and the linking of information to contacts. An improved understanding of the processes involved in contact group creation and factors that influence it with implications for supporting for manual, semi-automated, and automated group creation and identification. As well as a more complete picture of what information re-finding entails through analytical frameworks that describe the how, what, and why of re-finding task

Insight and search in Katona’s five-square problem

Insights are often productive outcomes of human thinking. We provide a cognitive model that explains insight problem solving by the interplay of problem space search and representational change, whereby the problem space is constrained or relaxed based on the problem representation. By introducing different experimental conditions that either constrained the initial search space or helped solvers to initiate a representational change, we investigated the interplay of problem space search and representational change in Katona’s five-square problem. Testing 168 participants, we demonstrated that independent hints relating to the initial search space and to representational change had little effect on solution rates. However, providing both hints caused a significant increase in solution rates. Our results show the interplay between problem space search and representational change in insight problem solving: The initial problem space can be so large that people fail to encounter impasse, but even when representational change is achieved the resulting problem space can still provide a major obstacle to finding the solution

Class size, pupil attentiveness and peer relations

BACKGROUND: Despite a long-running debate over the effects of class size differences on educational performance there is little evidence on the classroom processes that might be involved. AIMS: The effects of class size differences are examined in relation to social and behavioural adjustment to school, in terms of two dimensions: attentiveness and peer relations. It was predicted that as class size increased there would be more inattentiveness in class and more signs of social difficulties between children in the form of more rejection, asocial, anxious and aggressive behaviour, and less prosocial behaviour. SAMPLES: Data came from a large-scale longitudinal study of children over KS1 (4-7 years). The observation study was based on a subsample of 235 children in 21 small (average 19 children) and 18 large (average 33 children) reception classes (aged 5 years). The PBR sample involved over 5,000. METHODS: There were two complementary methods of data collection: first, a systematic observation study of pre-selected target children in terms of three 'social modes' - when with their teachers, other children and when not interacting - and in terms of work, procedural, social and off-task activities; and, second, a teacher administered Pupil Behaviour Rating (PBR) scale comprising over 50 items rated on a 3-point scale grouped into six 'factors': hyperactive/distractible, aggressive, anxious/ fearful, prosocial, asocial, and excluded. RESULTS: Observations showed that children in large classes were more likely to show off-task behaviour of all kinds, and more likely to interact with their peers in terms of off-task behaviour, social, and also on-task behaviours. Connections between class size and PBR factors were not strong. There was no support for the view that peer relations are better in smaller classes; indeed, there was a slight tendency for worse peer relations, in terms of aggression, asocial and excluded, in the smallest classes. CONCLUSIONS: There was confirmation that children in large classes are more distracted from work and more often off task. The unexpected result, based on teacher ratings, that small classes may lead to less social and more aggressive relations between children is discussed, along with implications for teachers of a tendency for more peer-related contacts in large classes

Electronic Social Networks as Supporting Means of Educational Process in Higher Education Institutions

Given research describes experience of electronic social networks use in educational practices. It was determined that electronic social networks can be a powerful tool for support of educational process in higher education institutions, namely to support study of different disciplines. There are main advantages of electronic social networks use for education: universal accessibility and free of charge; possibility of instant messaging and multimedia data; user-friendly intuitive interface; ability to search data and information; availability of event scheduling, invitations, reminder settings; support for synchronous and asynchronous communication between network members; access from different devices. It is emphasized that one of the main advantages of electronic social networks is receipt of quick feedback and convenience of their tools and services. Nowadays, it is important to include network educational interaction in existing models of study organization. It is advisable to use electronic social networks to manage educational process in higher education institution. Efficiency of electronic social networks use depends on intensity and need for their use in educational system management for implementation of organizational, educational, psychological and pedagogical functions and ensuring universal communication with subjects of educational process. Expediency of electronic social networks use to carry out research work at university is described. Electronic social networks are convenient tool to conduct surveys and questionnaires, to create thematic groups for specific issue discussion. Also it is possible to interact with researchers from different countries, share experiences and disseminate research findings, invite those who wish to participate in various scientific activities using these networks