The Role of Narrative Structures and Contextual Information in Digital Interactive 3D Testimonies

This article explores the role of narrative structures and contextual information in the development and implementation of digital interactive 3D testimonies. Based on considerations associated with other testimonial formats and the discourse surrounding them, it will be argued that the conceptual nature of digital interactive 3D testimonies leads to the circumstance that they lack a coherent original narrative when reduced to their interactive elements. Instead, individual audience decisions could lead to the construction of different individual narratives. However, this paper will show that this is not necessarily the outcome for all forms of interaction. Instead, multiple different scenarios are imaginable, varying greatly in the quantity and depth of interaction between testimony and audience. The provision of contextual information may further the goal of enabling audiences to independently interact with a digital interactive 3D testimony and, thus, enhance the overall experience and the likelihood of individual narratives emerging. Overall, these findings are meant to assist the future development and implementation of digital interactive 3D testimonies, and also to provide new theoretical insights into the format for researchers involved in the field of oral history

Digital Literacy Learning In Higher Education Through Digital Storytelling Approach

It is necessary to develop digital literacy skills with which students can communicate and express their ideas effectively using digital media. The educational sectors around the world are beginning to incorporate digital literacy into the curriculum. Digital storytelling, one of the possible classroom activities, is an approach which may help engage and motivate students to learn digital literacy skills. To investigate this approach, the present small-scale study employs the methods including interviewing and analysing the artefacts of three students selected from a purposive sample on a multimedia course. The findings indicate that the three students have improved in terms of three aspects of digital literacy skills, namely, digital competence, digital usage and digital transformation regardless of their prior knowledge and levels of digital literacy.postprin

Digital Literacy Learning In Higher Education Through Digital Storytelling Approach

It is necessary to develop digital literacy skills with which students can communicate and express their ideas effectively using digital media. The educational sectors around the world are beginning to incorporate digital literacy into the curriculum. Digital storytelling, one of the possible classroom activities, is an approach which may help engage and motivate students to learn digital literacy skills. To investigate this approach, the present small-scale study employs the methods including interviewing and analysing the artefacts of three students selected from a purposive sample on a multimedia course. The findings indicate that the three students have improved in terms of three aspects of digital literacy skills, namely, digital competence, digital usage and digital transformation regardless of their prior knowledge and levels of digital literacy.

Evaluation of the Interaction with a Digital 3D Testimony

Conversations with Holocaust survivors are an integral part of education in German schools and universities as well as part of the German memory culture. The goal of interactive stereoscopic digital Holocaust testimonies is to preserve the effects of meeting and interacting with these contemporary witnesses as faithfully as possible. These virtual humans are non-synthetic, i.e., there exists no underlying system, which extrapolates from recorded data to synthesize and generate new answers. This means that immersion-breaking difficulties common to synthetic virtual humans, such as the audio-visual uncanny valley, can be prevented. Issues resulting from technical constraints, technological barriers to entry or errors, machine and human alike, during the design and creation of the application cannot, however, be ruled out. Therefore, I conducted a preliminary study to evaluate how people perceive this first German-speaking digital interactive 3D Holocaust testimony. I investigated how the study participants perceived the technical and semantic quality of recording and display, the difficulties in using and interacting, the accuracy and relevance of the answers given as well as the authenticity and emotiveness of the virtual contemporary witness. In this paper, I detail how the study was set up, the results of the survey, and my analysis of the data.Zeitzeugengespräche mit Holocaust-Überlebenden sind fester Bestandteil der Bildung an Schulen und Universitäten sowie Teil der deutschen Erinnerungskultur. Ziel interaktiver stereoskopischer digitaler Holocaustzeugnisse ist es, die Auswirkungen der Begegnung und Interaktion mit diesen Zeitzeug*innen so realitätstreu wie möglich zu bewahren. Diese virtuellen Menschen sind nicht-synthetisch, es gibt also kein zugrundeliegendes System, das aus aufgezeichneten Daten extrapoliert, um neue Antworten zu synthetisieren und zu generieren. Dadurch können einige immersionsbrechende Eigenschaften, wie das audiovisuelle Uncanny Valley, verhindert werden. Probleme, die sich aus technischen Beschränkungen, technologischen Eintrittsbarrieren oder menschlichen und technischen Fehlern während des Designs und der Erstellung der Anwendung ergeben, können jedoch nicht ausgeschlossen werden. Deshalb habe ich anhand des 3D-Zeugnisses des Holocaust-Überlebenden Abba Naor eine Vorstudie durchgeführt, um zu evaluieren, wie Menschen auf dieses erste deutschsprachige digitale interaktive 3D-Zeugnis reagieren. Ich untersuchte, wie die technische und semantische Qualität der Aufzeichnung und Darstellung, die Schwierigkeiten bei der Nutzung und Interaktion, die Genauigkeit und Relevanz der gegebenen Antworten sowie die Authentizität und Emotionalität des virtuellen Zeitzeugen wahrgenommen werden. In diesem Beitrag erläutere ich die Spezifikationen des Aufbaus, die Ergebnisse der Erhebung und meine Analyse der Ergebnisse

What the research says about the use of different technologies to enhance learning

Educational technology is growing fast, with schools, colleges and universities more than ever looking for the best ways to use technology to support learning. At the same time, there is an increasing appetite for learning and teaching practices to be backed up by evidence. Few resources are able to offer guidance that has been vigorously tested by research. Now, 'Enhancing Learning and Teaching with Technology' brings together researchers, technologists and educators to explore and show how technology can be designed and used for learning and teaching to best effect. It addresses what the research says about: - how and why learning happens and how different technologies can enhance it - engaging a variety of learners through technology and helping them benefit from it - how technology can support teaching. This book is an accessible introduction to learning and teaching with technology for teachers and other educational professionals, regardless of their experience with using technology for education

Ambidexterity Through the Lens of Conventions? A Qualitative Study on Personal Virtual Assistants

Personal virtual assistants (PVAs) are demanded to effectively fulfil and support employee’s tasks in organizations. Today, PVAs are mainly trusted to take over simple administrative tasks, thus, limiting their potential long-term impact on employees and entire organizations. To overcome this shortcoming, we introduce the pragmatic perspective of the Economics of Conventions (EC) to analyze and understand employees’ plural motives and behaviors that may explain sustained or fragmented potential PVA use in organizations, especially taking the organizational challenge of ambidexterity into account. In doing so, we provide a deepened understanding of PVAs’ capabilities and give propositions for their organizational implementation and use. We also offer new avenues for future research by calling for a more holistic theoretical foundation of organizational artificial intelligence solutions that consider and represent organizations and their employees in their complexity, respectively their plural orders of worth

Interactive Storytelling: 8th International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling, ICIDS 2015, Copenhagen, Denmark, November 30 – December 4, 2015, Proceedings

This volume contains the proceedings of ICIDS 2015: The 8th International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling. ICIDS is the premier annual venue that gathers researchers, developers, practitioners, and theorists to present and share the latest innovations, insights, and techniques in the expanding field of interactive storytelling and the technologies that support it. The field regroups a highly dynamic and interdisciplinary community, in which narrative studies, computer science, interactive and immersive technologies, the arts, and creativity converge to develop new expressive forms in a myriad of domains that include artistic projects, interactive documentaries, cinematic games, serious games, assistive technologies, edutainment, pedagogy, museum science, advertising, and entertainment, to mention a few. The conference has a long-standing tradition of bringing together academia, industry, designers, developers, and artists into an interdisciplinary dialogue through a mix of keynote lectures, long and short article presentations, posters, workshops, and very lively demo sessions. Additionally, since 2010, ICIDS has been hosting an international art exhibition open to the general public. In 2015, ICIDS took place in Copenhagen at Aalborg University in Copenhagen, marking the conference’s return to Europe. This year the review process was extremely selective and many good papers could not be accepted for the final program. Altogether, we received 80 submissions in all the categories. Out of the 48 full-paper submissions, the Program Committee selected only 18 submissions for presentation and publication as full papers, which corresponds to an acceptance rate of less than 38 % for full papers. In addition, we accepted 13 submissions as short papers, nine submissions as posters, and three submissions as demonstrations, including some long papers that qualified for participation in one of these categories. The ICIDS 2015 program featured contributions from 48 different institutions in 18 different countries worldwide. The conference program also hosted two invited speakers: Chris Crawford, Game Design veteran, Interactive Storytelling pioneer and designer of Siboot; and Paul Mulholland from the Knowledge Media Institute (The Open University, UK), forerunner in the use and development of interactive narrative tools for enhancing learning and museum experience. The titles of their talks were: • Chris Crawford: “The Siren Song of Interactive Storytelling” • Paul Mulholland: “Interactive Narrative and Museums” In addition to paper and poster presentations, ICIDS 2015 featured a very rich pre-conference workshop day with 13 workshops: (1) Building IDS Research and Development Bridges, (2) The Ontology Project for Interactive Digital Narrative, (3) Inspired Models for Interactive Narrative, (4) Managing the Stage: Challenges of Participatory Storytelling, (5) Storytelling Lighting Design, (6) The Overlap and Joint Potential Between Theater and IDS, (7) RPGs, Edularp and Blackbox: A Theoretical and Practical Primer on Role-Playing Games and Their Relevance for IDS, (8) When Our Destinies Meet: Design and Play a Blackbox Larp, (9) Storytelling, Digital Media, Museums and Beuys, (10) Creating Video Content for Oculus Rift - Scriptwriting for 360 Interactive Video Productions, (11) Wish Game Workshop, (12) Mobile Storytelling 3.0: How to Create Mobile and Digital Location-Based Stories, and finally (13) Social Media Fiction: Designing Stories for Social Media. In conjunction with the academic conference, the interactive narratives art exhibition was held at the industrial era museum Diesel House in Copenhagen. The art exhibition featured a selection of 14 artworks selected from 30 submissions by an international jury. We would like to express our gratitude and sincere appreciation to all the authors included in this volume for their effort in preparing their submissions and for their participation in the conference. Equally we want to heartily thank our Program Committee and art exhibition jurors for their accurateness and diligence in the review process, our invited speakers for their insightful and inspirational talks, and the workshops organizers for the dynamism and creativity that they brought into the conference. A special thanks goes to the Danish Council for Independent Research for their financial support, to the Diesel House Museum, Copenhagen (Denmark), for hosting our International Art Exhibition, and to the ICIDS Steering Committee for granting us the opportunity to host ICIDS 2015 In Copenhagen. Thanks to you all! November 2015 Henrik Schoenau-Fog Luis Emilio Bruni Sandy Louchart Sarune Baceviciut

O digital storytelling como técnica de marketing : os casos Repetto, Carel e Josefinas

O presente trabalho de investigação tem como objectivo compreender de que forma o storytelling digital pode ser uma mais valia para as marcas. Procuramos circunscrever a análise teórica ao campo do stortytelling, branding, marketing de conteúdos e storytelling digital para que se possa construir uma base científica para posterior análise empírica das marcas Repetto, Carel e Josefinas. Baseando a investigação científica no campo interpretativista, procurou-se perceber como é que storytelling pode ser indissociável da comunicação humana e como pode atuar no contexto publicitário digital. A análise qualitativa de texto é a abordagem escolhida para a análise dos estudos de caso e procurou determinar se as marcas recorrem ao storytelling digital enquanto técnica de marketing de conteúdos. Procurou-se também fazer uma análise comparativa entre as três marcas para averigurar se alguma usa o storytelling de forma mais acentuada do que as restantes.This research work aims at understanding the ways in which digital storytelling can be a valuable asset for brands. Our theoretical analysis focuses on the fields of storytelling, branding, content marketing and digital storytelling in order to build up scientific grounds on which to sustain the empirical analysis of the Repetto, Carel and Josefinas brands. By focusing the scientific research on the interpretative field, we will attempt to understand how can storytelling be connected to human communication and how it can act in a digital advertisement context. Qualitative text analysis is the chosen approach for the case study analysis and it will attempt to show whether brands use digital storytelling as a content marketing technique. A comparative analysis of all three brands is also performed, in order to investigate whether any of them resorts to storytelling more often

Lighting design principles for placemaking in historic sites

This thesis identifies the various interrelated areas needed in the research and preparation of lighting design schemes for historic sites as facilitators for placemaking processes. In doing so, it firstly focuses upon placemaking as an influential process in enriching urban spaces. Ball (2014) identifies the international nature of placemaking which he views as the “process of activating new or existing public spaces to create that emotional connection”. He explains that placemaking is understood as taking diverse forms that enable public spaces to function through design, programming, community empowerment, wayfinding, art, and whatever the needs of that particular community include. This thesis studies the different definition of placemaking through secondary research, and finally introduces a comprehensive definition of placemaking based on the finding in respect to lighting design as part of its contribution to knowledge. The thesis argues that historic sites should be seen as important infrastructures for placemaking in urban spaces. By linking the requirements of such sites and considering placemaking process obligations, the thesis develops lighting design principles for historic sites through the placemaking process. The design principles proposed in the thesis are supported by two case studies of UNESCO registered world heritage sites; the first is a best practice case study in lighting design while the second is significant in relation to its public lighting. Using ethnography research methods through observation, semi-structured interviews and questionnaires, the research identifies relevant experiences and opinions of local stakeholders, lighting designers and heritage experts. The data was then interpreted through thematic analysis which resulted to the presentation of the following arguments: Firstly, it argues that lighting in historic sites is an effective design feature which can successfully support placemaking goals. Secondly, according to this, it presents the historic site-specific aspects which deal with the authenticity of the site and the management factors, as well as people’s vital role which generates from placemaking as essential considerations. thirdly, it suggests lighting design considerations and characteristics that need to be taken into account as essential aspects in historic sites through placemaking process. Together, these recommendations provide the basis of lighting design principles for historic sites through placemaking. This evolutionary focus is intended to guide lighting designers to produce informed design decisions for historic sites and policy makers in heritage sites to develop lighting design regulation for such setting which will result in reaching successful placemaking processes