23,954 research outputs found
Heuristic Evaluation for Serious Immersive Games and M-instruction
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016. Two fast growing areas for technology-enhanced learning are serious games and mobile instruction (M-instruction or M-Learning). Serious games are ones that are meant to be more than just entertainment. They have a serious use to educate or promote other types of activity. Immersive Games frequently involve many players interacting in a shared rich and complex-perhaps web-based-mixed reality world, where their circumstances will be multi and varied. Their reality may be augmented and often self-composed, as in a user-defined avatar in a virtual world. M-instruction and M-Learning is learning on the move; much of modern computer use is via smart devices, pads, and laptops. People use these devices all over the place and thus it is a natural extension to want to use these devices where they are to learn. This presents a problem if we wish to evaluate the effectiveness of the pedagogic media they are using. We have no way of knowing their situation, circumstance, education background and motivation, or potentially of the customisation of the final software they are using. Getting to the end user itself may also be problematic; these are learning environments that people will dip into at opportune moments. If access to the end user is hard because of location and user self-personalisation, then one solution is to look at the software before it goes out. Heuristic Evaluation allows us to get User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) experts to reflect on the software before it is deployed. The effective use of heuristic evaluation with pedagogical software [1] is extended here, with existing Heuristics Evaluation Methods that make the technique applicable to Serious Immersive Games and mobile instruction (M-instruction). We also consider how existing Heuristic Methods may be adopted. The result represents a new way of making this methodology applicable to this new developing area of learning technology
Mobile Life: A Research Foundation for Mobile Services
The telecom and IT industry is now facing the challenge of a second IT-revolution, where the
spread of mobile and ubiquitous services will have an even more profound effect on commercial
and social life than the recent Internet revolution. Users will expect services that are unique and
fully adapted for the mobile setting, which means that the roles of the operators will change, new
business models will be required, and new methods for developing and marketing services have
to be found. Most of all, we need technology and services that put people at core. The industry
must prepare to design services for a sustainable web of work, leisure and ubiquitous technology
we can call the mobile life. In this paper, we describe the main components of a research agenda
for mobile services, which is carried out at the Mobile Life Center at Stockholm University. This
research program takes a sustainable approach to research and development of mobile and
ubiquitous services, by combining a strong theoretical foundation (embodied interaction), a welldefined
methodology (user-centered design) and an important domain with large societal
importance and commercial potential (mobile life). Eventually the center will create an
experimental mobile services ecosystem, which will serve as an open arena where partners from
academia and industry can develop our vision an abundant future marketplace for future mobile servĂces
Incentive Mechanisms for Participatory Sensing: Survey and Research Challenges
Participatory sensing is a powerful paradigm which takes advantage of
smartphones to collect and analyze data beyond the scale of what was previously
possible. Given that participatory sensing systems rely completely on the
users' willingness to submit up-to-date and accurate information, it is
paramount to effectively incentivize users' active and reliable participation.
In this paper, we survey existing literature on incentive mechanisms for
participatory sensing systems. In particular, we present a taxonomy of existing
incentive mechanisms for participatory sensing systems, which are subsequently
discussed in depth by comparing and contrasting different approaches. Finally,
we discuss an agenda of open research challenges in incentivizing users in
participatory sensing.Comment: Updated version, 4/25/201
Quality of Information in Mobile Crowdsensing: Survey and Research Challenges
Smartphones have become the most pervasive devices in people's lives, and are
clearly transforming the way we live and perceive technology. Today's
smartphones benefit from almost ubiquitous Internet connectivity and come
equipped with a plethora of inexpensive yet powerful embedded sensors, such as
accelerometer, gyroscope, microphone, and camera. This unique combination has
enabled revolutionary applications based on the mobile crowdsensing paradigm,
such as real-time road traffic monitoring, air and noise pollution, crime
control, and wildlife monitoring, just to name a few. Differently from prior
sensing paradigms, humans are now the primary actors of the sensing process,
since they become fundamental in retrieving reliable and up-to-date information
about the event being monitored. As humans may behave unreliably or
maliciously, assessing and guaranteeing Quality of Information (QoI) becomes
more important than ever. In this paper, we provide a new framework for
defining and enforcing the QoI in mobile crowdsensing, and analyze in depth the
current state-of-the-art on the topic. We also outline novel research
challenges, along with possible directions of future work.Comment: To appear in ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks (TOSN
Measuring the Use of the Active and Assisted Living Prototype CARIMO for Home Care Service Users: Evaluation Framework and Results
To address the challenges of aging societies, various information and communication technology (ICT)-based systems for older people have been developed in recent years. Currently, the evaluation of these so-called active and assisted living (AAL) systems usually focuses on the analyses of usability and acceptance, while some also assess their impact. Little is known about
the actual take-up of these assistive technologies. This paper presents a framework for measuring the take-up by analyzing the actual usage of AAL systems. This evaluation framework covers detailed information regarding the entire process including usage data logging, data preparation, and usage data analysis. We applied the framework on the AAL prototype CARIMO for measuring
its take-up during an eight-month field trial in Austria and Italy. The framework was designed to guide systematic, comparable, and reproducible usage data evaluation in the AAL field; however, the general applicability of the framework has yet to be validated
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The genesis and development of mobile learning in Europe
In the past two decades, European researchers have conducted many significant mobile learning projects. The chapter explores how these projects have arisen and what each one has contributed, so as to show the driving forces and outcomes of European innovation in mobile learning. The authors identify context as a central construct in European researchers’ conceptualizations of mobile learning and examine theories of learning for the mobile world, based on physical, technological, conceptual, social and temporal mobility. The authors also examine the impacts of mobile learning research on educational practices and the implications for policy. Finally, they suggest future challenges for researchers, developers and policy makers in shaping the future of mobile learning
Distributed Technology-Sustained Pervasive Applications
Technology-sustained pervasive games, contrary to technology-supported
pervasive games, can be understood as computer games interfacing with the
physical world. Pervasive games are known to make use of 'non-standard input
devices' and with the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT), pervasive
applications can be expected to move beyond games. This dissertation is
requirements- and development-focused Design Science research for distributed
technology-sustained pervasive applications, incorporating knowledge from the
domains of Distributed Computing, Mixed Reality, Context-Aware Computing,
Geographical Information Systems and IoT. Computer video games have existed for
decades, with a reusable game engine to drive them. If pervasive games can be
understood as computer games interfacing with the physical world, can computer
game engines be used to stage pervasive games? Considering the use of
non-standard input devices in pervasive games and the rise of IoT, how will
this affect the architectures supporting the broader set of pervasive
applications? The use of a game engine can be found in some existing pervasive
game projects, but general research into how the domain of pervasive games
overlaps with that of video games is lacking. When an engine is used, a
discussion of, what type of engine is most suitable and what properties are
being fulfilled by the engine, is often not part of the discourse. This
dissertation uses multiple iterations of the method framework for Design
Science for the design and development of three software system architectures.
In the face of IoT, the problem of extending pervasive games into a fourth
software architecture, accommodating a broader set of pervasive applications,
is explicated. The requirements, for technology-sustained pervasive games, are
verified through the design, development and demonstration of the three
software system architectures. The ...Comment: 64 pages, 13 figure
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