The TA Framework: Designing Real-time Teaching Augmentation for K-12 Classrooms

Recently, the HCI community has seen increased interest in the design of teaching augmentation (TA): tools that extend and complement teachers' pedagogical abilities during ongoing classroom activities. Examples of TA systems are emerging across multiple disciplines, taking various forms: e.g., ambient displays, wearables, or learning analytics dashboards. However, these diverse examples have not been analyzed together to derive more fundamental insights into the design of teaching augmentation. Addressing this opportunity, we broadly synthesize existing cases to propose the TA framework. Our framework specifies a rich design space in five dimensions, to support the design and analysis of teaching augmentation. We contextualize the framework using existing designs cases, to surface underlying design trade-offs: for example, balancing actionability of presented information with teachers' needs for professional autonomy, or balancing unobtrusiveness with informativeness in the design of TA systems. Applying the TA framework, we identify opportunities for future research and design.Comment: to be published in Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 17 pages, 10 figure

Awareness Is Not Enough: Pitfalls of Learning Analytics Dashboards in the Educational Practice

Presentation at 12th European Conference on Technology enhanced learning (EC-TEL 2017

Diabetic ketoacidosis

Diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) is the most common acute hyperglycaemic emergency in people with diabetes mellitus. A diagnosis of DKA is confirmed when all of the three criteria are present — ‘D’, either elevated blood glucose levels or a family history of diabetes mellitus; ‘K’, the presence of high urinary or blood ketoacids; and ‘A’, a high anion gap metabolic acidosis. Early diagnosis and management are paramount to improve patient outcomes. The mainstays of treatment include restoration of circulating volume, insulin therapy, electrolyte replacement and treatment of any underlying precipitating event. Without optimal treatment, DKA remains a condition with appreciable, although largely preventable, morbidity and mortality. In this Primer, we discuss the epidemiology, pathogenesis, risk factors and diagnosis of DKA and provide practical recommendations for the management of DKA in adults and children

Towards an open standard for gameplay metrics

Gameplay Metrics can help provide insights into player behaviour and performance, supporting game designers and players wishing to better understand their own game, yet such data is often not easily available to the wider public. We take our inspiration from the field of Learning Analytics, which attempts to create awareness and insights for learners by leveraging the gathered activity data and feeding this back to the students in an open way. This paper suggests an open standard for gathering and storing Gameplay Metrics data based on proven standards in Learning Analytics, facilitating easier development of analytical tools across different video games and genres to the benefit of researchers, developers, and players.status: publishe

Digital badging at The Open University: recognition for informal learning

Awarding badges to recognise achievement is not a new development. Digital badging now offers new ways to recognise learning and motivate learners, providing evidence of skills and achievements in a variety of formal and informal settings. Badged open courses (BOCs) were piloted in various forms by the Open University (OU) in 2013 to provide a digital acknowledgement for learners’ participation in three entry-level, unsupported courses: Learning to Learn and Succeed with Maths Parts 1 and 2. The desire to build on the OU’s badging pilots is informed by research into the motivations and demographic profiles of learners using the free educational resources which the OU makes available through its OpenLearn platform. This research activity was repeated in 2014 and found that an increasing proportion of informal learners is keen to have their informal learning achievements recognised. This paper outlines how the evaluation of the 2013 pilots has informed the development of a suite of free employability and skills BOCs in 2014 that are assessed through the deployment of Moodle quizzes. It also discusses how the motivational aspects of digital badging support the growth in free, micro-credentialised courses against a backdrop of MOOC providers issuing certification for fee. The BOC project, which aligns with the University’s Journeys from Informal to Formal Learning strategy, will help to provide accessible routes into the University for students who might not otherwise have the opportunity to participate and supports the OU Charter to promote the educational well-being of the community

Interactive surfaces and learning analytics: Data, orchestration aspects, pedagogical uses and challenges

© 2016 ACM. The proliferation of varied types of multi-user interactive surfaces (such as digital whiteboards, tabletops and tangible interfaces) is opening a new range of applications in face-to-face (f2f) contexts. They offer unique opportunities for Learning Analytics (LA) by facilitating multi-user sensemaking of automatically captured digital footprints of students' f2f interactions. This paper presents an analysis of current research exploring learning analytics associated with the use of surface devices. We use a framework to analyse our first-hand experiences, and the small number of related deployments according to four dimensions: The orchestration aspects involved; the phases of the pedagogical practice that are supported; the target actors; and the levels of iteration of the LA process. The contribution of the paper is twofold: 1) a synthesis of conclusions that identify the degree of maturity, challenges and pedagogical opportunities of the existing applications of learning analytics and interactive surfaces; and 2) an analysis framework that can be used to characterise the design space of similar areas and LA applications

Learning Analytics for Natural User Interfaces: A Framework, Case Studies and a Maturity Analysis

The continuous advancement of natural user interfaces (NUIs) allows for the development of novel and creative ways to support collocated collaborative work in a wide range of areas, including teaching and learning. The use of NUIs, such as those based on interactive multi-touch surfaces and tangible user interfaces (TUIs), can offer unique opportunities for learning, for automatically capturing digital traces of students’ multimodal interactions, and for facilitating multi-user exploration of student data. We used a composite framework to characterize our first-hand experiences and a small number of related deployments. The dimensions of analysis considered include the orchestration activities involved, the phases of pedagogical practice supported, the target actors, the iteration of the LA process, and the levels of impact of the LA deployment. Resultsfrom our analysis helped us identify the current trends, gaps, challenges, and pedagogical opportunities of the application of LA and the use of NUIs for support learning

Evaluating the use of open badges in an open learning environment

This paper reports on our ongoing research around learning analytics. We focus on how learning analytics can be used to increase student motivation and the use of badges as a way to aggregate learning activity being a representation of their goals and progress along the course. The context of this work is an open learning environment, based on wikis, blogs, twitter, an activity stream mash-up and an open badges system. Our evaluation analyses perceived usefulness and usability of the system, as well as the impact on student motivation. Our results indicate that badges are useful to motivate students while activity streams have the potential to activate students