624 research outputs found

    Performance of grassed swale as stormwater quantity control in lowland area

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    Grassed swale is a vegetated open channel designed to attenuate stormwater through infiltration and conveying runoff into nearby water bodies, thus reduces peak flows and minimizes the causes of flood. UTHM is a flood-prone area due to located in lowland area, has high groundwater level and low infiltration rates. The aim of this study is to assess the performance of grassed swale as a stormwater quantity control in UTHM. Flow depths and velocities of swales were measured according to Six-Tenths Depth Method shortly after a rainfall event. Flow discharges of swales (Qswale) were evaluated by Mean- Section Method to determine the variations of Manning’s roughness coefficients (ncalculate) that results between 0.075 – 0.122 due to tall grass and irregularity of channels. Based on the values of Qswale between sections of swales, the percentages of flow attenuation are up to 54%. As for the flow conveyance of swales, Qswale were determined by Manning’s equation that divided into Qcalculate, evaluated using ncalculate, and Qdesign, evaluated using roughness coefficient recommended by MSMA (ndesign), to compare with flow discharges of drainage areas (Qpeak), evaluated by Rational Method with 10-year ARI. Each site of study has shown Qdesign is greater than Qpeak up to 59%. However, Qcalculate is greater than Qpeak only at a certain site of study up to 14%. The values of Qdesign also greater than Qcalculate up to 52% where it shows that the roughness coefficients as considered in MSMA are providing a better performance of swale. This study also found that the characteristics of the studied swales are comparable to the design consideration by MSMA. Based on these findings, grassed swale has the potential in collecting, attenuating, and conveying stormwater, which suitable to be applied as one of the best management practices in preventing flash flood at UTHM campus

    Designing OLMs for reflection about group brainstorming at interactive tabletops

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    Brainstorming is a valuable and widely-used group technique to enhance creativity. Interactive tabletops have the potential to support brainstorming and, by exploiting learners' trace data, they can provide Open Learner Models (OLMs) to support reflection on a brainstorming session. We describe our design of such OLMs to enable an individual to answer core questions: C1) how much did I contribute? C2) at what times was the group or an individual stuck? and C3) where did group members seem to 'spark' off each other? We conducted 24 brainstorming sessions and analysed them to create core brainstorming models underlying the OLMs. We evaluated the OLMs in a think-aloud study designed to see whether learners could interpret the OLMs to answer the core questions. Results indicate the OLMs were effective and that it is valuable, that learners benefit from guidance in their reflection and from drawing on an example of an excellent group's OLM. Our contributions are: i) the first OLMs supporting reflection on brainstorming; ii) models of brainstorming that underlie the OLMs; and iii) a user study demonstrating that learners can use the OLMs to answer the core reflection questions

    Bringing tabletop technologies to kindergarten children

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    Taking computer technology away from the desktop and into a more physical, manipulative space, is known that provide many benefits and is generally considered to result in a system that is easier to learn and more natural to use. This paper describes a design solution that allows kindergarten children to take the benefits of the new pedagogical possibilities that tangible interaction and tabletop technologies offer for manipulative learning. After analysis of children's cognitive and psychomotor skills, we have designed and tuned a prototype game that is suitable for children aged 3 to 4 years old. Our prototype uniquely combines low cost tangible interaction and tabletop technology with tutored learning. The design has been based on the observation of children using the technology, letting them freely play with the application during three play sessions. These observational sessions informed the design decisions for the game whilst also confirming the children's enjoyment of the prototype

    GAINE - tanGible Augmented INteraction for Edutainment

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    Interactive tabletops are gaining an increasing interest since they provide a more natural interaction with digital contents and allow the interaction of multiple users at a time promoting face-to-face collaboration, information sharing and the raise of social experiences. Given the potentialities offered by these devices, several entertainment-edutainment applications based on interactive tabletops have been successfully developed in different areas, from medical therapy support to children’s collaborative learning, interactive storytelling and cultural heritage. However, the development of such applications often requires complex technical and implementation skills. Taking this into consideration, in this paper we present GAINE (tanGible Augmented INteraction for Edutainment), a software framework aimed at the rapid prototyping and development of interactive tabletop games. GAINE offers developers context specific high-level constructs and a simple scripting language that simplifies the implementation task. The framework is portable on different operating systems and offers independence from the underlying hardware. Two practical case studies are thoroughly discussed to show how GAINE can simplify the development of interactive tabletop applications in the entertainment and edutainment contexts

    S-COL: A Copernican turn for the development of flexibly reusable collaboration scripts

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    Collaboration scripts are usually implemented as parts of a particular collaborative-learning platform. Therefore, scripts of demonstrated effectiveness are hardly used with learning platforms at other sites, and replication studies are rare. The approach of a platform-independent description language for scripts that allows for easy implementation of the same script on different platforms has not succeeded yet in making the transfer of scripts feasible. We present an alternative solution that treats the problem as a special case of providing support on top of diverse Web pages: In this case, the challenge is to trigger support based on the recognition of a Web page as belonging to a specific type of functionally equivalent pages such as the search query form or the results page of a search engine. The solution suggested has been implemented by means of a tool called S-COL (Scripting for Collaborative Online Learning) and allows for the sustainable development of scripts and scaffolds that can be used with a broad variety of content and platforms. The tool’s functions are described. In order to demonstrate the feasibility and ease of script reuse with S-COL, we describe the flexible re-implementation of a collaboration script for argumentation in S-COL and its adaptation to different learning platforms. To demonstrate that a collaboration script implemented in S-COL can actually foster learning, an empirical study about the effects of a specific script for collaborative online search on learning activities is presented. The further potentials and the limitations of the S-COL approach are discussed

    Tangible user interfaces to support collaborative learning

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    GAINE - A Portable Framework for the Development of Edutainment Applications Based on Multitouch and Tangible Interaction

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    In the last few years, Multitouch and Tangible User Interfaces have emerged as a powerful tool to integrate interactive surfaces and responsive spaces that embody digital information. Besides providing a natural interaction with digital contents, they allow the interaction of multiple users at the same time, thus promoting collaborative activities and information sharing. In particular, these characteristics have opened new exploration possibilities in the edutainment context, as witnessed by the many applications successfully developed in different areas, from children’s collaborative learning to interactive storytelling, cultural heritage and medical therapy support. However, due to the availability of different multitouch and tangible interaction technologies and of different target computing platforms, the development and deployment of such applications can be challenging. To this end, in this paper we present GAINE (tanGible Augmented INteraction for Edutainment), a software framework that enables rapid prototyping and development of tangible augmented applications for edutainment purposes. GAINE has two main features. First, it offers developers high-level context specific constructs that significantly reduces the implementation burden. Second, the framework is portable on different operating systems and offers independence from the underlying hardware and tracking technology. In this paper, we also discuss several case studies to show the effectiveness of GAINE in simplifying the development of entertainment and edutainment applications based on multitouch and tangible interaction

    The role of personal and shared displays in scripted collaborative learning

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    Over the last decades collaborative learning has gained immensely in importance and popularity due to its high potential. Unfortunately, learners rarely engage in effective learning activities unless they are provided with instructional support. In order to maximize learning outcomes it is therefore advisable to structure collaborative learning sessions. One way of doing this is using collaboration scripts, which define a sequence of activities to be carried out by the learners. The field of computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) produced a variety of collaboration scripts that proved to have positive effects on learning outcomes. These scripts provide detailed descriptions of successful learning scenarios and are therefore used as foundation for this thesis. In many cases computers are used to support collaborative learning. Traditional personal computers are often chosen for this purpose. However, during the last decades new technologies have emerged, which seem to be better suited for co-located collaboration than personal computers. Large interactive displays, for example, allow a number of people to work simultaneously on the same surface while being highly aware of the co-learners' actions. There are also multi-display environments that provide several workspaces, some of which may be shared, others may be personal. However, there is a lack of knowledge regarding the influence of different display types on group processes. For instance, it remains unclear in which cases shareable user interfaces should replace traditional single-user devices and when both personal and shared workspaces should be provided. This dissertation therefore explores the role of personal and shared workspaces in various situations in the area of collaborative learning. The research questions include the choice of technological devices, the seating arrangement as well as how user interfaces can be designed to guide learners. To investigate these questions a two-fold approach was chosen. First, a framework was developed, which supports the implementation of scripted collaborative learning applications. Second, different prototypes were implemented to explore the research questions. Each prototype is based on at least one collaboration script. The result is a set of studies, which contribute to answering the above-mentioned research questions. With regard to the choice of display environment the studies showed several reasons for integrating personal devices such as laptops. Pure tabletop applications with around-the-table seating arrangements whose benefits for collaboration are widely discussed in the relevant literature revealed severe drawbacks for text-based learning activities. The combination of laptops and an interactive wall display, on the other hand, turned out to be a suitable display environment for collaborative learning in several cases. In addition, the thesis presents several ways of designing the user interface in a way that guides learners through collaboration scripts

    A Pilot Study with a Novel Setup for Collaborative Play of the Humanoid Robot KASPAR with children with autism

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    This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and the source are credited.This article describes a pilot study in which a novel experimental setup, involving an autonomous humanoid robot, KASPAR, participating in a collaborative, dyadic video game, was implemented and tested with children with autism, all of whom had impairments in playing socially and communicating with others. The children alternated between playing the collaborative video game with a neurotypical adult and playing the same game with the humanoid robot, being exposed to each condition twice. The equipment and experimental setup were designed to observe whether the children would engage in more collaborative behaviours while playing the video game and interacting with the adult than performing the same activities with the humanoid robot. The article describes the development of the experimental setup and its first evaluation in a small-scale exploratory pilot study. The purpose of the study was to gain experience with the operational limits of the robot as well as the dyadic video game, to determine what changes should be made to the systems, and to gain experience with analyzing the data from this study in order to conduct a more extensive evaluation in the future. Based on our observations of the childrens’ experiences in playing the cooperative game, we determined that while the children enjoyed both playing the game and interacting with the robot, the game should be made simpler to play as well as more explicitly collaborative in its mechanics. Also, the robot should be more explicit in its speech as well as more structured in its interactions. Results show that the children found the activity to be more entertaining, appeared more engaged in playing, and displayed better collaborative behaviours with their partners (For the purposes of this article, ‘partner’ refers to the human/robotic agent which interacts with the children with autism. We are not using the term’s other meanings that refer to specific relationships or emotional involvement between two individuals.) in the second sessions of playing with human adults than during their first sessions. One way of explaining these findings is that the children’s intermediary play session with the humanoid robot impacted their subsequent play session with the human adult. However, another longer and more thorough study would have to be conducted in order to better re-interpret these findings. Furthermore, although the children with autism were more interested in and entertained by the robotic partner, the children showed more examples of collaborative play and cooperation while playing with the human adult.Peer reviewe
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