Personalization in cultural heritage: the road travelled and the one ahead

Over the last 20 years, cultural heritage has been a favored domain for personalization research. For years, researchers have experimented with the cutting edge technology of the day; now, with the convergence of internet and wireless technology, and the increasing adoption of the Web as a platform for the publication of information, the visitor is able to exploit cultural heritage material before, during and after the visit, having different goals and requirements in each phase. However, cultural heritage sites have a huge amount of information to present, which must be filtered and personalized in order to enable the individual user to easily access it. Personalization of cultural heritage information requires a system that is able to model the user (e.g., interest, knowledge and other personal characteristics), as well as contextual aspects, select the most appropriate content, and deliver it in the most suitable way. It should be noted that achieving this result is extremely challenging in the case of first-time users, such as tourists who visit a cultural heritage site for the first time (and maybe the only time in their life). In addition, as tourism is a social activity, adapting to the individual is not enough because groups and communities have to be modeled and supported as well, taking into account their mutual interests, previous mutual experience, and requirements. How to model and represent the user(s) and the context of the visit and how to reason with regard to the information that is available are the challenges faced by researchers in personalization of cultural heritage. Notwithstanding the effort invested so far, a definite solution is far from being reached, mainly because new technology and new aspects of personalization are constantly being introduced. This article surveys the research in this area. Starting from the earlier systems, which presented cultural heritage information in kiosks, it summarizes the evolution of personalization techniques in museum web sites, virtual collections and mobile guides, until recent extension of cultural heritage toward the semantic and social web. The paper concludes with current challenges and points out areas where future research is needed

User-centred design of flexible hypermedia for a mobile guide: Reflections on the hyperaudio experience

A user-centred design approach involves end-users from the very beginning. Considering users at the early stages compels designers to think in terms of utility and usability and helps develop the system on what is actually needed. This paper discusses the case of HyperAudio, a context-sensitive adaptive and mobile guide to museums developed in the late 90s. User requirements were collected via a survey to understand visitors’ profiles and visit styles in Natural Science museums. The knowledge acquired supported the specification of system requirements, helping defining user model, data structure and adaptive behaviour of the system. User requirements guided the design decisions on what could be implemented by using simple adaptable triggers and what instead needed more sophisticated adaptive techniques, a fundamental choice when all the computation must be done on a PDA. Graphical and interactive environments for developing and testing complex adaptive systems are discussed as a further step towards an iterative design that considers the user interaction a central point. The paper discusses how such an environment allows designers and developers to experiment with different system’s behaviours and to widely test it under realistic conditions by simulation of the actual context evolving over time. The understanding gained in HyperAudio is then considered in the perspective of the developments that followed that first experience: our findings seem still valid despite the passed time

Student-Centered Learning: Functional Requirements for Integrated Systems to Optimize Learning

The realities of the 21st-century learner require that schools and educators fundamentally change their practice. "Educators must produce college- and career-ready graduates that reflect the future these students will face. And, they must facilitate learning through means that align with the defining attributes of this generation of learners."Today, we know more than ever about how students learn, acknowledging that the process isn't the same for every student and doesn't remain the same for each individual, depending upon maturation and the content being learned. We know that students want to progress at a pace that allows them to master new concepts and skills, to access a variety of resources, to receive timely feedback on their progress, to demonstrate their knowledge in multiple ways and to get direction, support and feedback from—as well as collaborate with—experts, teachers, tutors and other students.The result is a growing demand for student-centered, transformative digital learning using competency education as an underpinning.iNACOL released this paper to illustrate the technical requirements and functionalities that learning management systems need to shift toward student-centered instructional models. This comprehensive framework will help districts and schools determine what systems to use and integrate as they being their journey toward student-centered learning, as well as how systems integration aligns with their organizational vision, educational goals and strategic plans.Educators can use this report to optimize student learning and promote innovation in their own student-centered learning environments. The report will help school leaders understand the complex technologies needed to optimize personalized learning and how to use data and analytics to improve practices, and can assist technology leaders in re-engineering systems to support the key nuances of student-centered learning

Student-Centered Learning: Impact Academy of Arts and Technology

This case study is one of four written by SCOPE about student-centered practices in schools. The case studies address the following questions:1. What are the effects of student-centered learning approaches on student engagement, achievement of knowledge and skills, and attainment (high school graduation, college admission, and college continuation and success), in particular for underserved students?2. What specific practices, approaches, and contextual factors result in these outcomes?The cases focus on the structures, practices, and conditions in the four schools that enable students to experience positive outcomes and consider the ways in which these factors are interrelated and work to reinforce each other

Smart Exposition Rooms: The Ambient Intelligence View

We introduce our research on smart environments, in particular research on smart meeting rooms and investigate how research approaches here can be used in the context of smart museum environments. We distinguish the identification of domain knowledge, its use in sensory perception, its use in interpretation and modeling of events and acts in smart environments and we have some observations on off-line browsing and on-line remote participation in events in smart environments. It is argued that large-scale European research in the area of ambient intelligence will be an impetus to the research and development of smart galleries and museum spaces

Competences for collaboration and knowledge sharing in digital society - a case study with an erasmus intensive programme

With the advent of social and collaborative environments, students became more active and participative - they not only have access to contents but also create and share them, becoming proactive. Communication has evolved, and with this evolution came the new media and the possibility of live conferencing, video sharing, social networking, collaborative tools, allowing the student to create, work collaboratively and communicate in a more direct way with their peers and their teachers. Instead of merely searching for information, applications such as bookmarking, feeds, tweeter and pinboards, digital portfolios, etc., along with the possibility of creating your own personal webpage, today’s Web gives students also the chance to create a PLE - A Personal Learning Environment. A PLE “recognizes that learning is continuing and seeks to provide tools to support that learning” (Attwell, 2007). The Individuals are responsible for the management of their own learning environment and for the selection of tools and contexts where learning will take place. Students need to acquire certain skills and competences, specific of a digital and connected society, in order to “effectively benefit from e-government, e-learning and e-health services, and participate actively in the knowledge society as co-creators, and not simply consumers, as highlighted by the European e-skills strategy” (McCormack, 2010). To only possess hard skills (that comes with experience and formal education) may not be enough to get someone a job. Besides e-skills and e-literacy competences, soft and social skills are also required. These can be practiced and enhanced in virtual environments. Digital literacy, and therefore e-skills, are transversal competences needed to every citizen. In this paper we will present the results of a case study carried out with attendees of an Erasmus Intensive Programme, which has promoted the development of digital literacies among participants. The Programme took place during 2013 summer and involved students and teachers (of teacher education and social service fields) from 3 different countries. The classes covered different tools and 12 tutors were involved. The main objectives were to provide students with information and communication technologies (ICT) skills for a digital society, namely: • Identification of students’ competencies in ICT; • Present students with different available collaboration tools by exploring the web 2.0; • Selection of specific tools to create students' personal learning environment (PLE); • Acquire necessary knowledge to master the selected tools; • Work collaboratively with the web 2.0 tools; • Establish methods for instruction and course design based on Web 2.0 (teacher education) with the goal to integrate technology enhanced learning and individual knowledge management in educational processes. At the end attendees were able to: • Master the different tools & services; • Be capable to use and select the most adequate web 2.0 tools & services; • Create and manage their PLE; • Share and to work collaboratively; • Be digitally skilled.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio