Security and Online learning: to protect or prohibit

The rapid development of online learning is opening up many new learning opportunities. Yet, with this increased potential come a myriad of risks. Usable security systems are essential as poor usability in security can result in excluding intended users while allowing sensitive data to be released to unacceptable recipients. This chapter presents findings concerned with usability for two security issues: authentication mechanisms and privacy. Usability issues such as memorability, feedback, guidance, context of use and concepts of information ownership are reviewed within various environments. This chapter also reviews the roots of these usability difficulties in the culture clash between the non-user-oriented perspective of security and the information exchange culture of the education domain. Finally an account is provided of how future systems can be developed which maintain security and yet are still usable

Designing electronic collaborative learning environments

Electronic collaborative learning environments for learning and working are in vogue. Designers design them according to their own constructivist interpretations of what collaborative learning is and what it should achieve. Educators employ them with different educational approaches and in diverse situations to achieve different ends. Students use them, sometimes very enthusiastically, but often in a perfunctory way. Finally, researchers study them and—as is usually the case when apples and oranges are compared—find no conclusive evidence as to whether or not they work, where they do or do not work, when they do or do not work and, most importantly, why, they do or do not work. This contribution presents an affordance framework for such collaborative learning environments; an interaction design procedure for designing, developing, and implementing them; and an educational affordance approach to the use of tasks in those environments. It also presents the results of three projects dealing with these three issues

Understanding Engagement within the Context of a Safety Critical Game

One of the most frequent arguments for deploying serious games is that they provide an engaging format for student learning. However, engagement is often equated with enjoyment, which may not be the most relevant conceptualization in safety-critical settings, such as law enforcement and healthcare. In these contexts, the term ‘serious’ does not only relate to the non-entertainment purpose of the game but also the environment simulated by the game. In addition, a lack of engagement in a safety critical training setting can have serious ethical implications, leading to significant real-world impacts. However, evaluations of safety-critical games (SCGs) rarely provide an in-depth consideration of player experience. Thus, in relation to simulation game-based training, we are left without a clear understanding of what sort of experience players are having, what factors influence their engagement and how their engagement relates to learning. In order to address these issues, this paper reports on the mixed-method evaluation of a SCG that was developed to support police training. The findings indicate that engagement is supported by the experience situational relevance, due to the player’s experience of real-world authenticity, targeted feedback mechanisms and learning challenges

Virtual self-conversation using motivational interviewing techniques to promote healthy eating and physical activity : A usability study

We aim to examine the usability of a Virtual Reality (VR) platform, called ConVRSelf, which has been designed to address the needs of People Living With Obesity (PLWO). Fourteen participants with a desire to eat healthier and exercise more (6 normal weight and 8 PLWO; Mean age = 41.86, SD = 13.89) were assigned to the experimental group (EG) or the control group (CG). EG participants, after being trained on motivational interviewing skills, engaged in a virtual self-conversation using embodiment and body swapping techniques, which aimed to normalize and resolve their ambivalence to change lifestyle habits. CG participants, embodied in their virtual bodies, participated in a pre-established discourse with a virtual counselor giving them psychoeducational advice about how to change lifestyle habits. A mixed-methods design was used, involving a semi-structured interview and self-report questionnaires, including readiness to change habits (Readiness Rulers), body ownership (Body Ownership Questionnaire, BOQ), and system usability (System Evaluation Questionnaire, SEQ). Thematic content analysis was carried out for qualitative data while statistical data analysis was carried out using SPSS 20.0. Participants from both groups showed high readiness to change lifestyle (Readiness Rulers) before engaging with the virtual experiences, which was maintained at the same level after the interventions and their scores on the SEQ and BOQ were satisfactory. Regarding qualitative information obtained from the interviews, almost all participants found the VR experience to be novel, interesting, and enjoyable. A higher acceptability was observed among PLWO from the EG than normal weight participants from the same group, a promising finding for the ConVRSelf platform, which had been specifically designed to address the needs of PLWO. The ConVRSelf system is well-accepted by participants and is ready to be tested with PLWO in a clinical setting

Second Life as a Learning and Teaching Environment for Digital Games Education

Previous studies show that online virtual worlds can contribute to the social aspects of distance learning, improve student engagement, and enhance students’ experience as a whole [4]; [3]. This paper reviews previous research of using online virtual worlds in teaching and learning, compares Second Life with traditional classroom sessions and the Blackboard, and discusses the benefits and problems of using virtual environments in the post-sixteen education and how they affect students’ learning. It also reports a study of using Second Life as an educational environment for teaching games design at undergraduate level, and investigates the impacts and implications of online virtual environments on learning and teaching processes and their application to digital games education. The sample was 27 first year students of the Computer Games Modelling and Animation course. Students’ views on using Second Life for learning and teaching were collected through a feedback questionnaire. The results suggest that virtual learning environments like Second Life can be exploited as a motivational learning tool. However, problems such as identify issues and lacking of role markers may change student behaviour in virtual classroom. We discuss this phenomenon and suggest ways to avoid it in the preparation stage

Understanding spatial data usability

In recent geographical information science literature, a number of researchers have made passing reference to an apparently new characteristic of spatial data known as 'usability'. While this attribute is well-known to professionals engaged in software engineering and computer interface design and testing, extension of the concept to embrace information would seem to be a new development. Furthermore, while notions such as the use and value of spatial information, and the diffusion of spatial information systems, have been the subject of research since the late-1980s, the current references to usability clearly represent something which extends well beyond that initial research. Accordingly, the purposes of this paper are: (1) to understand what is meant by spatial data usability; (2) to identify the elements that might comprise usability; and (3) to consider what the related research questions might be

A Reflection on Virtual Reality Design for Psychological, Cognitive & Behavioral Interventions: Design Needs, Opportunities & Challenges

Despite the substantial research interest in using Virtual Reality (VR) in healthcare in general and in Psychological, Cognitive, and Behavioral (PC&B) interventions in specific, as well as emerging research supporting the efficacy of VR in healthcare, the design process of translating therapies into VR to meet the needs of critical stakeholders such as users and clinicians is rarely addressed. In this paper, we aim to shed light onto the design needs, opportunities and challenges in designing efficient and effective PC&B-VR interventions. Through analyzing the co-design processes of four user-centered PC&B-VR interventions, we examined how therapies were adapted into VR to meet stakeholders’ requirements, explored design elements for meaningful experiences, and investigated how the understanding of healthcare contexts contribute to the VR intervention design. This paper presents the HCI research community with design opportunities and challenges as well as future directions for PC&B-VR intervention design

Heuristic Evaluation for Gameful Design

© Lennart Nacke, 2016. This is the author’s version of the work. It is posted here for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in CHI PLAY Companion '16 Proceedings of the 2016 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play Companion Extended Abstracts, https://doi.org/10.1145/2968120.2987729Despite the emergence of many gameful design methods in the literature, there is a lack of evaluation methods specific to gameful design. To address this gap, we present a new set of guidelines for heuristic evaluation of gameful design in interactive systems. First, we review several gameful design methods to identify the dimensions of motivational affordances most often employed. Then, we present a set of 28 gamification heuristics aimed at enabling experts to rapidly evaluate a gameful system. The resulting heuristics are a new method to evaluate user experience in gameful interactive systemsNatural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of CanadaPeer-reviewe

An evaluation of scaffolding for virtual interactive tutorials

Scaffolding refers to a temporary support framework used during construction. Applied to teaching and learning it describes measures to support a learner to become confident and self-reliant in a subject. In a Web environment scaffolding features need to replace the instructor. We discuss our approach to Web-based scaffolding based on the cognitive apprenticeship and activity theories. We suggest a set of four scaffold types that have made our scaffolding-supported virtual interactive tutorial successful. We present a novel evaluation approach for virtual tutorials that is embedded into an iterative, evolutionary instructional design

Mobile Usability in Educational Contexts: What have we learnt?

The successful development of mobile learning is dependent on human factors in the use of new mobile and wireless technologies. The majority of mobile learning activity continues to take place on devices that were not designed with educational applications in mind, and usability issues are often reported. The paper reflects on progress in approaches to usability and on recent developments, with particular reference to usability findings reported in studies of mobile learning. The requirements of education are considered as well as the needs of students participating in distance education; discipline-specific perspectives and accessibility issues are also addressed. Usability findings from empirical studies of mobile learning published in the literature are drawn together in the paper, along with an account of issues that emerged in two mobile learning projects based at The Open University, UK, in 2001 and 2005. The main conclusions are: that usability issues are often reported in cases where PDAs have been used; that the future is in scenario-based design which should also take into account the evolution of uses over time and the unpredictability of how devices might be used; and that usability issues should be tracked over a longer period, from initial use through to a state of relative experience with the technology