The Values of Tangible User Interfaces: How to discover, assess and evaluate them?

Since the introduction of Tangible User Interfaces, in the beginning of the 90s, a generation grew up interacting with computers. At the same time the context of computing changed dramatically: from a device used almost exclusively by specialists, it evolved to a general device that plays a dominant role in our societies. But where does this leave TUI? In many respects, the idea of tangibility plays a marginal role in Human Computer Interaction. It makes sense to re-evaluate the intrinsic values of TUI design. This paper proposes to research the appropriate metrics to do so

Tools for Integrating Computational Thinking and Mathematics in the Middle Grades

Integrating computational thinking (CT) in teaching specific K-12 school curricular is a more recent development than teaching CT in university and college courses. In this article, we share some insights on teaching practices that support integrating introductory computational thinking activities with school curricular activities for middle grades students. We specifically reflect on the tools and materials to use when integrating computational thinking concepts and mathematics curricular concepts in grade 4-8 classrooms. In this paper, we refer to integration of computational thinking concepts and mathematics curricular concepts as CT and mathematics

Tangible Interaction and Learning: The Case for a Hybrid Approach

Research involving tangible interaction and children has often focused on how tangibles might sup- port or improve learning compared to more traditional methods. In this paper, we review three of our research studies involving tangible computer programming that have addressed this question in a variety of learning environments with a diverse population of children. Through these studies, we identify situations in which tangible interaction seems to offer advantages for learning; how- ever, we have also identify situations in which tangible interaction proves less useful and an alternative interaction style provides a more appropriate medium for learning. Thus, we advocate for a hybrid approach—one that offers teachers and learners the flexibility to select the most appropriate interaction style to meet the needs of a specific situation

Web information systems: A study of maintenance, change and flexibility

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.Information Systems (IS’s) have provided organisations with huge efficiency gains and benefits over the years; however an outstanding problem that is yet to be successfully tackled is that of the troublesome maintenance phase. Consuming vast resources and thwarting business progression in a competitive global market place, system maintenance has been recognised as one of the key areas where IS is failing organisations. Organisations are too often faced with the dilemma of either replacement or the continual upkeep of an unwieldy system. The ability for IS’s to be able to adapt to exogenous influences is even more acute today than at any time in the past. This is due to IS’s namely, Web Information Systems (WIS’s) increasingly and continually having to accommodate the needs of organisations to interconnect with a plethora of additional systems as well as supporting evolving business models. The richness of the interconnectivity, functionalities and services WIS’s now offer are shaping social, cultural and economic behaviour on a truly global scale, making the maintenance of such systems and evermore pertinent issue. The growth and proliferation of WIS’s shows no sign of abating which leads to the conclusion that what some have termed as the ‘maintenance iceberg’ should not be ignored. The quandary that commercial organisations face is typically driven by two key aspects; firstly, systems are built on the cultural premise of using fixed requirements, with not enough thought or attention being paid to systems abilities to deviate from these requirements. Secondly, systems do not generally cope well with adapting to unpredictable change arising from outside of the organisations environment. Over the recent past, different paradigms, approaches and methods have attempted to make software development more predictable, controllable and adaptable, however, the benefits of such measures in relation to the maintenance dilemma have been limited. The concept of flexible systems that are able to cope with such change in an efficient manner is currently an objective that few can claim to have realised successfully. The primary focus of the thesis was to examine WIS post-development change in order to empirically substantiate and understand the nature of the maintenance phase. This was done with the intention to determine exactly ‘where’ and ‘how’ flexibility could be targeted to address these changes. This study uses an emergent analytical approach to identify and catalogue the nature of change occurring within WIS maintenance. However, the research framework design underwent a significant revision as the initial results indicated that a greater emphasis and refocus was required to achieve the research objective. To study WIS’s in an appropriate and detailed context, a single case study was conducted in a web development software house. In total the case study approach was used to collect empirical evidence from four projects that investigated post-development change requests in order to identify areas of the system susceptible to change. The maintenance phases of three WIS projects were considered in-depth, resulting in the collection of over four hundred change requests. The fourth project served as a validation case. The results are presented and the findings are used to identify key trends and characteristics that depict WIS maintenance change. The analytical information derived from the change requests is consolidated and shown diagrammatically for the key areas of change using profile models developed in this thesis. Based on the results, the thesis concludes and contributes to the ongoing debate that there is a discernable difference when considering WIS maintenance change compared to that of traditional IS maintenance. The detailed characteristics displayed in the profile models are then used to map specific flexibility criteria that ultimately are required to facilitate change. This is achieved using the Flexibility Matrix of Change (FMoC) tool which was developed within the remit of this research. This tool is a qualitative measurement scheme that aligns WIS maintenance changes to a reciprocal flexibility attribute. Thus, the wider aim of this thesis is to also expand the awareness of flexibility and its importance as a key component of the WIS lifecycle

Effects of hanyu pinyin on pronunciation in learners of Chinese as a foreign language

This paper provides evidence that the hanyu pinyin representation of the phonology of Chinese affects the production of Chinese phonology in instructed learners of Chinese as a Foreign Language. Pinyin generally has a one-to-one correspondence between graphemes and phonemes, but its transcription of some Chinese rimes does not represent the main vowel. As a consequence, learners of Chinese as a Foreign Language have non-target-like phonological representations of Chinese rimes, which in turn lead to non-target-like pronunciations. A hanzi reading-aloud task was used to elicit syllables containing the three rimes /iou/, /uei/ and /uən/ from final-year CFL students. Results show that learners often delete the vowels that are not represented in the pinyin transcription, but they produce the same vowels in the same rimes when the pinyin transcription represents them. It is concluded that the pinyin orthographic input interacts with the phonological input in shaping the phonological representations and pronunciation of Chinese syllables in intermediate as well as beginner CFL learners. Language teachers should therefore be aware of the effects of the pinyin orthography

Embodied approaches to learning programming

This thesis explores observable representations of embodied learning, such as physicality, gestures and the use of conceptual metaphors among students in primary computing education. To understand the influence of more physically interactive forms of interface, I compared the use of two user interfaces – a Tangible User Interface (TUI) and Graphical User Interface (GUI) – to foster programming skills in primary school students aged between six and seven. The first phase of this thesis, Studies 1 and 2, adopted a between-subjects design to examine the impact of interface type on several variables including enjoyment, attitudes, learning outcomes, and frequency of gestures, as well as the effect of gender on each variable. Both Study 1 and 2 examined the relationship between student gestures and learning outcomes. Study 1 examined the effect of physicality as an input by asking students to use a block-based programming environment to control a physical robot (PR) to solve six activities (two complex, four simple) where the students used either a TUI-PR or a GUI-PR. The use of a GUI-PR was associated with improved learning outcomes, but the TUI-PR led to a greater attitudinal improvement toward computing. No difference was identified in the number of gestures used by participants in the TUI-PR and GUI-PR groups, but a statistically significant difference was identified between the mean learning gains in programming of high-frequency gesturers and low-frequency gesturers, with the top quartile showing significantly greater learning gains. Study 2 further examined the effect of physicality as both an input and an output by comparing two block-based programming environments: first, a TUI-PR consisting of physical, hand-manipulated blocks to control a physical robot; and second, a GUI-SR, which involve using touchscreen-operable programming blocks to control an on-screen robot (SR) to solve four simple activities. No difference was observed between the TUI-PR and GUI-PR in terms of learning outcomes, but the GUI-PR was associated with attitudinal improvement toward computing. Additionally, no difference was observed in the number of gestures used by participants in the TUI-PR and GUI-SR groups and no relationship was identified between the frequency of gestures and learning gains. In both studies, no difference was found in terms of the level of enjoyment or by gender across all the measures. The results also demonstrated that children used a range of gestures to represent the concept of iteration including pointing, literal representational gestures and metaphorical representational gestures. In Study 3, we addressed a gap in the current theoretical understanding of computing education by drawing on embodied cognition theory. Using methodological tools from cognitive linguistics and gesture research, an analysis of how primary school students used spontaneous co-speech gestures when responding to interview questions and describing programming concepts was conducted. The findings show representational patterns in these gestures, thereby suggesting the potential of this methodological approach to provide a deeper understanding of the nature of learners’ cognition in the domain of computing education. This work that contributes to two main areas: first, the field of interaction design, particularly relating to the importance of physicality in programming environments for children; and second, current understandings of the importance of gestures and conceptual metaphors in CS education in primary school. This thesis presents an in-depth comparison of the use of a TUI and GUI to teach programming skills to primary school students. In particular, the findings indicate that a GUI-SR is suitable for children’s learning and is associated with greater attitudinal improvement than a TUI. This thesis also investigated the potential relationship between increased embodiment in the interface and output device (e.g., physicality) and increased use of embodied representations (e.g., gestures) that showed no relationship across Studies 1 and 2. This research describes children’s use of spontaneous gestures when solving programming problems and explaining programming concepts. Additionally, regarding the use of spontaneous gestures, this research demonstrates how investigating children’s gestures may help to characterise children’s conceptions in primary computing, possibly allowing the identification of misconceptions and assisting the identification of productive educational strategies. This research has also provided evidence indicating that children use spontaneous hand gestures to demonstrate abstract computational concepts, even in the absence of relevant stimuli (i.e., written code); this reflects how gestures may indicate the embodiment of the children’s computing notions. Furthermore, this research presents tentative evidence of cultural influences on embodied conceptualisations. The findings suggest that the direction of a culture’s written language (i.e., right-to-left or left-to-right) influences the direction and use of conceptual metaphors in CS. Finally, this research identified a positive relationship between the mean learning gains of high-frequency gesturers and low-frequency gesturers on tasks with varying problem difficulties. This work represents the first step toward understanding children’s embodied descriptions of programming and the potential role of gestures in supporting their learning. This was a worthwhile area of research because, although the analysis of children’s gestures has already proven valuable in illuminating knowledge acquisition and conceptual development in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields such as mathematics itself, the area of computing education is currently underexplored