Location-based technologies for learning

Emerging technologies for learning report - Article exploring location based technologies and their potential for educatio

Intrinsic fantasy: motivation and affect in educational games made by children

The concept of intrinsic fantasy has been considered central to the aim of usefully applying the positive affect of computer games to learning. Games with intrinsic fantasy are defined as having “an integral and continuing relationship with the instructional content being presented”, and are claimed as “more interesting and more educational” than extrinsic fantasy games [1]. Studies of children making educational games have shown they usually create extrinsic games for curriculum learning content. In this study, children were encouraged to create non-curriculum games, more easily distanced from the extrinsic preconceptions of formal schooling. Forty, 7-11 year olds took part in this study (17 boys and 23 girls), designing and making their own games at an after-school club. Despite non-curriculum learning content, no more intrinsic games were created than in previous studies. The children failed to create their own pedagogical models for non-curriculum content and did not see the educational value of intrinsic fantasy games. The implications for transfer and learning in intrinsic games are discussed whilst the definition of intrinsic fantasy itself is questioned. It is argued that the integral relationship of fantasy is unlikely to be the most critical means of improving the educational effectiveness of digital games

Early experiences of computer‐aided assessment and administration when teaching computer programming

This paper describes early experiences with the Ceilidh system currently being piloted at over 30 institutions of higher education. Ceilidh is a course‐management system for teaching computer programming whose core is an auto‐assessment facility. This facility automatically marks students programs from a range of perspectives, and may be used in an iterative manner, enabling students to work towards a target level of attainment. Ceilidh also includes extensive course‐administration and progress‐monitoring facilities, as well as support for other forms of assessment including short‐answer marking and the collation of essays for later hand‐marking. The paper discusses the motivation for developing Ceilidh, outlines its major facilities, then summarizes experiences of developing and actually using it at the coal‐face over three years of teaching

Sculpting a mobile musical soundtrack

We present an in-the-wild project to design and study a mobile musical soundtrack that enhances the experience of visiting a sculpture park. As with soundtracks for films and games, the goal was to enhance the emotional and narrative aspects of the experience while remaining in the background. We describe a compositional approach in which we first established a broad musical landscape before treating specific exhibits with detailed musical trajectories. Our study reveals how our soundtrack dramatically shaped visitors’ experiences while they remained largely unaware of its operation. We distil seven experiential factors to be addressed by mobile soundtracks alongside ten compositional guidelines

^muzicode$: composing and performing musical codes

We present muzicodes, an approach to incorporating machine-readable ‘codes’ into music that allows the performer and/or composer to flexibly define what constitutes a code, and to perform around it. These codes can then act as triggers, for example to control an accompaniment or visuals during a performance. The codes can form an integral part of the music (composition and/or performance), and may be more or less obviously present. This creates a rich space of playful interaction with a system that recognises and responds to the codes. Our proof of concept implementation works with audio or MIDI as input. Muzicodes are represented textually and regular expressions are used to flexibly define them. We present two contrasting demonstration applications and summarise the findings from two workshops with potential users which highlight opportunities and challenges, especially in relation to specifying and matching codes and playing and performing with the system

Understanding social media and sound: music, meaning and membership, the case of SoundCloud

Social media technologies have meant that people’s mu- sic consumption and production practices have rapidly changed and evolved. In this paper, we start to explore and present some of our initial findings in respect to this growing area of research by focusing upon the audio distribution platform SoundCloud. Technologies such as SoundCloud are enabling music producers and consumers a whole range of different ways in which they can engage, give/get feedback, promote, share, acquire, tag and make meaning of music. In this respect we are able to observe the role that such systems play in respect to: workflows and metadata production. The work also speaks about music consumption and production; as an individual and part of the crowd. We envisage that this paper will both provide a platform for future research and offer some insights into this world

The art and ‘science’ of opera: composing, staging & designing new forms of interactive theatrical performance

New technologies, such as Virtual Reality (VR), Robotics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are steadily having an impact upon the world of opera. The evolving use of performance-based software such as Ableton Live and Max/MSP has created new and exciting compositional techniques that intertwine theatrical and musical performance. This poster presents some initial work on the development of an opera using such technologies that is being composed by Kallionpää and Chamberlain

Developing ideation cards for mixed reality game design

Mixed reality games (MRGs) pose new challenges but also opportunities to designers. In order to make the design space of MRGs easily accessible and enable collaborative design in a playful manner we have developed Mixed Reality Game Cards. These ideation cards synthesize design knowledge about MRGs and are inspired by a variety of other successful ideation cards. We describe six studies, illustrate the iterative development of our cards, and reflect how the structure of our cards might influence future ideation cards

MarathOn Multiscreen: group television watching and interaction in a viewing ecology

This paper reports and discusses the findings of an exploratory study into collaborative user practice with a multiscreen television application. MarathOn Multiscreen allows users to view, share and curate amateur and professional video footage of a community marathon event. Our investigations focused on collaborative sharing practices across different viewing activities and devices, the roles taken by different devices in a viewing ecology, and observations on how users consume professional and amateur content. Our Work uncovers significant differences in user behaviour and collaboration when engaged in more participatory viewing activities, such as sorting and ranking footage, which has implications for awareness of other users’ interactions while viewing together and alone. In addition, user appreciation and use of amateur video content is dependent not only on quality and activity but their personal involvement in the contents

Supporting group coherence in a museum visit

Visiting museums as part of a group poses the challenge of managing engagement with exhibits while preserving group cohesion. We respond to this by reconfiguring the social dynamic of visiting with an experience designed specifically for groups, that invites the group members themselves to design and ‘gift’ interpretations to one another. We present a trial of this experience with groups of family and friends at a museum. We show how groups managed and configured themselves during the visit, revealing the strategies involved in maintaining different group behaviors. We discuss how our design accommodated different visiting styles by making objects social and scaffolding rather than directing the group experience. We interpret our findings to frame group coherence as a flexible and configurable phenomenon within CSCW