Bringing Video Communication to the Community: Opportunities and Challenges

The rise of online social networks, the wide availability of video communication technology and the deployment of high-speed broadband networks together provide the opportunity for video to become a medium for mass social communication among communities. However, current solutions provide poor support for ad hoc social interactions among multiple groups of participants. This position paper summarises the results of more than 5 years’ research to make communication and engagement easier between groups of people separated in space. It shows how communication can be effectively combined with different shared activities, and how the technical capabilities of Communication Orchestration and Dynamic Composition work together to improve the quality of human interactions. The paper also describes ongoing work to develop the Service-Aware Network as a means of optimising the quality of a user’s communication experience while making most efficient use of network resources. We believe these developments could enable video-mediated communication to become an effective and accepted enabler for social communication within community groups globall

A QoE study of different stream and layout configurations in video conferencing under limited network conditions

One particular problem of QoE research in video conferencing is, that most research in the past concentrated on one-to-one video conferencing or simply video consumption. However, video conferencing with two people (one-to-one) and within a group (multi-party) is different. Particularly, limitations of one participant might have an effect on the QoE of the whole group. This possible effect however is not well studied. Therefore, this paper aims to better understand the impact of individual limitations towards the groups QoE. To do so, we show a study about different video stream configurations and layouts for multi-party conferencing in respect to individual network limitations. For this, we conduct a user study with 20 participants in 5 groups, in a semi-controlled setup. Such a setup, combines supervising participants locally while still using our software infrastructure deployed in the internet. Furthermore, we use an asymmetric experiment design, by putting every participant under a different condition, as this proposes a more realistic scenario. Within our study, we look at three different factors: layout, video quality and network limitations. To foster conversation between participants, the group engaged in a discussion about different survival questions. Our findings show that packet loss and the resulting distortions have a greater impact on the QoE as reducing the video quality by its resolution. Furthermore, our findings indicate that participants are more satisfied in a visually equal layout (showing participants in a similar size) and a more balanced stream configuration

A theoretical model for organizing and understanding teacher learning opportunities to teach mathematics

Understanding how teacher learning is constituted is an important research area in teacher education with many open questions to be investigated yet. Thereby, in this paper, we present a theoretical model whose main purpose is to enable the design of teacher education programs as well as to guide the understanding of professional learning opportunities for teachers. Based on our research outcomes on teaching and learning algebra and on a literature review, we describe how the model was elaborated and bring some illustrative situations to indicate the model “in action” throughout the teacher education process. The architecture of the program enabled teachers to experience professional learning opportunities linked to mathematical and didactical knowledge regarding patterns and regularities, as well as the opportunity to learn from and with each other, overcoming the isolation caused by daily work in their schools and leading them to explore practices close to their own school reality.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

How to capitalise on mobility, proximity and motion analytics to support formal and informal education?

© 2017, CEUR-WS. All rights reserved. Learning Analytics and similar data-intensive approaches aimed at understanding and/or supporting learning have mostly focused on the analysis of students' data automatically captured by personal computers or, more recently, mobile devices. Thus, most student behavioural data are limited to the interactions between students and particular learning applications. However, learning can also occur beyond these interface interactions, for instance while students interact face-to-face with other students or their teachers. Alternatively, some learning tasks may require students to interact with non-digital physical tools, to use the physical space, or to learn in different ways that cannot be mediated by traditional user interfaces (e.g. motor and/or audio learning). The key questions here are: why are we neglecting these kinds of learning activities? How can we provide automated support or feedback to students during these activities? Can we find useful patterns of activity in these physical settings as we have been doing with computer-mediated settings? This position paper is aimed at motivating discussion through a series of questions that can justify the importance of designing technological innovations for physical learning settings where mobility, proximity and motion are tracked, just as digital interactions have been so far

Sociocultural understandings of technology-mediated educational practices: improvable objects and meaning-making trajectories in the ICT-literate classroom

Informed by sociocultural theory, this thesis addresses the gap between the view that teaching-and-learning should be an extended, integrated experience, and the limited research available on how classroom technologies can support this (Glover, et al., 2007). The research explores a new programme using technologies (including interactive whiteboards: IWBs) together with dance/movement and more traditional classroom activities to support teaching-and-learning. Data are presented from eight consecutive history lessons on the Great Fire of London with a Year 2 class (6-7 years), together with four interviews, two Video-Stimulated Reflective Dialogue sessions and a focus group. Findings are based on sociocultural discourse analysis (Mercer, 2004), multimodal analysis (Jewitt, 2009; Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001) and thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) of these data. With implications for both theory and practice, analysis shows how the IWB was used in innovative ways to offer structure and flexibility across lessons. Evidence is also provided of how exploring the topic through dance/movement, images and other activities could support pupils in building conceptual understanding. This then served as a context to develop verbally-expressed understanding. Analysis indicates, however, that confusion could arise in the different ways concepts were referred to through this integrated approach. Based on these findings, Wells’ (1999) concept of the ‘improvable object’ is extended to illustrate how flexible use of IWB slides and talk around them, and how exploring and re-versioning concepts across activities, brings new dimensions to the knowledge-construction process. Furthermore, the importance of addressing meaning making as an interactional achievement became evident, through extension of Baldry and Thibault’s (2006) ‘meaning-making trajectory’. Analysing teacher and pupil perspectives offers valuable insights, regarding how the teacher used and improvised from his lesson plan to acknowledge pupils’ interpretations, and support ongoing meaning making. These contributions represent important understandings of knowledge construction in contemporary, technology-mediated classrooms

Mobile Learning: location, collaboration and scaffolding inquiry

Critiques of mobile learning pedagogy are concerned with whether such approaches are technology led. This chapter discusses how the particular features of mobile learning can be harnessed to provide new learning opportunities in relation to collaboration, inquiry and location-based learning. Technology supported inquiry learning is a situation rich with possibilities for collaboration. In particular, mobile learning offers new possibilities for scaffolding collaboration together with its other better-known features such as scaffolding the transfer between settings and making learning relevant by making use of the possibilities of location-based learning. These features are considered as part of mobile learning models, in particular mobile collaborative learning models

Routines, Reconfiguration and the Contribution of Business Analytics to Organisational Performance

Availability of large volumes of data in the firms has given a rise in interest in the potential use of business analytics applications. Research has investigated the potential of business analytics to deliver improved performance and competitive advantage at the firm level. However, a theoretical framework identifying the organisational factors which enables the firms to realise those performance gains and competitive advantage has not been clearly articulated. This paper proposes a theoretical framework identifying the organisational factors involved in realising performance gains and competitive advantage from business analytics. This paper draws on the foundational works of dynamic capabilities, routines and effective use to develop a research model. The data collected to test the research model is described along with the analytical strategies to test the model. Implications for research and practice are discussed

5Growth: An end-to-end service platform for automated deployment and management of vertical services over 5G networks

This article introduces the key innovations of the 5Growth service platform to empower vertical industries with an AI-driven automated 5G end-to-end slicing solution that allows industries to achieve their service requirements. Specifically, we present multiple vertical pilots (Industry 4.0, transportation, and energy), identify the key 5G requirements to enable them, and analyze existing technical and functional gaps as compared to current solutions. Based on the identified gaps, we propose a set of innovations to address them with: (i) support of 3GPP-based RAN slices by introducing a RAN slicing model and providing automated RAN orchestration and control; (ii) an AI-driven closed-loop for automated service management with service level agreement assurance; and (iii) multi-domain solutions to expand service offerings by aggregating services and resources from different provider domains and also enable the integration of private 5G networks with public networks.This work has been partially supported by EC H2020 5GPPP 5Growth project (Grant 856709)