Sighted and visually impaired students’ perspectives of illustrations, diagrams and drawings in school science

In this paper we report on the views of students with and without visual impairments on the use of illustrations, diagrams and drawings (IDD) in science lessons. Method Our findings are based on data gathered through a brief questionnaire completed by a convenience sample of students prior to trialling new resource material. The questionnaire sought to understand the students’ views about using IDD in science lessons. The classes involved in the study included one class from a primary school, five classes from a secondary school and one class from a school for visually impaired students. Results Approximately 20% of the participants thought that the diagrams were boring and just under half (48%) of the total sample (regardless of whether they were sighted or visually impaired) did not think diagrams were easy to use. Only 14% of the participants felt that repeated encounters with the same diagrams made the diagrams easy to understand. Unlike sighted students who can ‘flit’ across diagrams, a visually impaired student may only see or touch a small part of the diagram at a time so for them ‘fliting’ could result in loss of orientation with the diagram. Conclusions Treating sighted and visually impaired pupils equally is different to treating them identically. Sighted students incidentally learn how to interpret visual information from a young age. Students who acquire sight loss need to learn the different rules associated with reading tactile diagrams, or large print and those who are congenitally blind do not have visual memories to rely upon

Towards Serious Games for Improved BCI

Brain-computer interface (BCI) technologies, or technologies that use online brain signal processing, have a great promise to improve human interactions with computers, their environment, and even other humans. Despite this promise, there are no current serious BCI technologies in widespread use, due to the lack of robustness in BCI technologies. The key neural aspect of this lack of robustness is human variability, which has two main components: (1) individual differences in neural signals and (2) intraindividual variability over time. In order to develop widespread BCI technologies, it will be necessary to address this lack of robustness. However, it is currently unknown how neural variability affects BCI performance. To accomplish these goals, it is essential to obtain data from large numbers of individuals using BCI technologies over considerable lengths of time. One promising method for this is through the use of BCI technologies embedded into games with a purpose (GWAP). GWAP are a game-based form of crowdsourcing which players choose to play for enjoyment and during which the player performs key tasks which cannot be automated but that are required to solve research questions. By embedding BCI paradigms in GWAP and recording neural and behavioral data, it should be possible to much more clearly understand the differences in neural signals between individuals and across different time scales, enabling the development of novel and increasingly robust adaptive BCI algorithms

“Arseing around was fun!”:humor as a resource in design and making

Abstract Humor is an inevitable part of human life. Most of us are capable of experiencing and appreciating humor. From this perspective, surprisingly little HCI research can be found scrutinizing the existence, role, and potential of humor in our design practice. The gap remains also related to children and teenagers; there is a lack of studies appreciating the emergence and existence of humor in the design process without intentionally evoking it. Thus, this study examines humor as a naturally occurring phenomenon in the design process. The study was conducted in collaboration with a class of teenagers and their teachers. The study identifies various forms and functions of humor in the design process and reveals its situated, emergent nature as a resource in interaction within design. The study proposes a practical tool for designers for anticipating and potentially facilitating the emergence, forms and usages of humor as an interactional resource in design