QuizMap: Open social student modeling and adaptive navigation support with TreeMaps

In this paper, we present a novel approach to integrate social adaptive navigation support for self-assessment questions with an open student model using QuizMap, a TreeMap-based interface. By exposing student model in contrast to student peers and the whole class, QuizMap attempts to provide social guidance and increase student performance. The paper explains the nature of the QuizMap approach and its implementation in the context of self-assessment questions for Java programming. It also presents the design of a semester-long classroom study that we ran to evaluate QuizMap and reports the evaluation results. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

Progressor: Social navigation support through open social student modeling

The increased volumes of online learning content have produced two problems: how to help students to find the most appropriate resources and how to engage them in using these resources. Personalized and social learning have been suggested as potential ways to address these problems. Our work presented in this paper combines the ideas of personalized and social learning in the context of educational hypermedia. We introduce Progressor, an innovative Web-based tool based on the concepts of social navigation and open student modeling that helps students to find the most relevant resources in a large collection of parameterized self-assessment questions on Java programming. We have evaluated Progressor in a semester-long classroom study, the results of which are presented in this paper. The study confirmed the impact of personalized social navigation support provided by the system in the target context. The interface encouraged students to explore more topics attempting more questions and achieving higher success rates in answering them. A deeper analysis of the social navigation support mechanism revealed that the top students successfully led the way to discovering most relevant resources by creating clear pathways for weaker students. © 2013 Taylor and Francis Group, LLC

Motivational Social Visualizations for Personalized E-Learning

A large number of educational resources is now available on the Web to support both regular classroom learning and online learning. However, the abundance of available content produces at least two problems: how to help students find the most appropriate resources, and how to engage them into using these resources and benefiting from them. Personalized and social learning have been suggested as potential methods for addressing these problems. Our work presented in this paper attempts to combine the ideas of personalized and social learning. We introduce Progressor + , an innovative Web-based interface that helps students find the most relevant resources in a large collection of self-assessment questions and programming examples. We also present the results of a classroom study of the Progressor +  in an undergraduate class. The data revealed the motivational impact of the personalized social guidance provided by the system in the target context. The interface encouraged students to explore more educational resources and motivated them to do some work ahead of the course schedule. The increase in diversity of explored content resulted in improving students’ problem solving success. A deeper analysis of the social guidance mechanism revealed that it is based on the leading behavior of the strong students, who discovered the most relevant resources and created trails for weaker students to follow. The study results also demonstrate that students were more engaged with the system: they spent more time in working with self-assessment questions and annotated examples, attempted more questions, and achieved higher success rates in answering them

Supporting Privacy Management via Community Experience and Expertise

We propose a novel approach for supporting privacy management that leverages community experience and expertise via the process of social navigation. Social navigation simplifies the often complex task of managing privacy settings, and systems that employ social navigation can advantageously complement user privacy management processes. We implemented our approach to privacy management in the Acumen system; Acumen uses social navigation to enable individuals to manage their Internet cookies both manually and automatically based on the behavior of others in the community. We present the Acumen system in detail and discuss data obtained from a six-week, preliminary deployment of Acumen. Lastly, we discuss challenges that systems implementing our approach must address if they are to be successful

Social navigation

In this chapter we present one of the pioneer approaches in supporting users in navigating the complex information spaces, social navigation support. Social navigation support is inspired by natural tendencies of individuals to follow traces of each other in exploring the world, especially when dealing with uncertainties. In this chapter, we cover details on various approaches in implementing social navigation support in the information space as we also connect the concept to supporting theories. The first part of this chapter reviews related theories and introduces the design space of social navigation support through a series of example applications. The second part of the chapter discusses the common challenges in design and implementation of social navigation support, demonstrates how these challenges have been addressed, and reviews more recent direction of social navigation support. Furthermore, as social navigation support has been an inspirational approach to various other social information access approaches we discuss how social navigation support can be integrated with those approaches. We conclude with a review of evaluation methods for social navigation support and remarks about its current state

Narrative Substrates: Reifying and Managing Emergent Narratives in Persistent Game Worlds

International audiencePlayers in modern Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games progress through ambitiously designed narratives, but have no real influence on the game, since only their characters' data, not the game environment, persists. Although earlier games supported player influence by persisting changes in the world, they relied on players' capacity to form their own stories and lacked guidance for character progression. We explore how persistence and narrative emergence let us build upon players' influence rather than restrict it. We ran four studies and found that players highly value first-time and unique events, and often externalize their experiences to the Web to collaborate and socialize, but unintentionally also disrupt some aspects of in-game play. We introduce Narrative Substrates, a theoretical framework for designing game architec-tures that represent, manage, and persist traces of player activity as unique, interactive content. To illustrate and test the theory, we developed the game We Ride and deployed it as a two-phase technology probe over one year. We identify key benefits and challenges of our approach, and argue that reification of emergent narratives offers new design opportunities for creating truly interactive games

Less sedentary time is associated with a more favourable glucose-insulin axis in obese pregnant women—a secondary analysis of the DALI study

Background/objectives: Obese pregnant women are at high risk of developing gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM), which might be reduced by sufficient physical activity (PA) and reduced sedentary time (ST). We assessed whether PA and ST are longitudinally associated with the glucose-insulin axis in obese pregnant women. Subjects/methods: In this secondary analysis of the DALI (vitamin D And Lifestyle Intervention for gestational diabetes mellitus prevention) study, pregnant women, <20 weeks gestation, with a pre-pregnancy body mass index (BMI) ≥ 29 kg/m2, without GDM on entry were included. Time spent in moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA) and ST were measured objectively with accelerometers at <20 weeks, 24–28 weeks and 35–37 weeks of gestation. Fasting glucose (mmol/l) and insulin (mU/l), insulin resistance (HOMA-IR) and first-phase and second-phase insulin release (Stumvoll first and second phase) were assessed at the same time. Linear mixed regression models were used to calculate between-participant differences and within-participant changes over time. Analyses were adjusted for gestational age, randomisation, pre-pregnancy BMI, education and age. MVPA,

Navigation in Spatial Information Environments: User Interface Design Issues for Hypertext and VR Systems Posters

The Information City project (presented in a poster at Hypertext 93) uses the spatial user interface metaphor of a city to organize and navigate large collections of hypertextual information. As we are used to navigate real life cities the city metaphor --  enriched with magic features -- should help to navigate information structures. A first implementation of the Information City was started in a MUD system. MUDs are networked multi-user text-adventure games which usually make use of a house / city metaphor. MUDs are conceptually similar to hypertext systems and navigational findings in those systems are therefore relevant also to hypertext. While implementing the first parts of the city research into navigation in MUDs was found necessary. This poster presents some results of this navigational study and describes how knowledge in the domains of architecture and city-planning can be used to design an easy to navigate virtual city. Highlights of the results concern magic features and collaboration. Magic features extend the spatial metaphor beyond typical properties of space. An example is the hypertext link which allows tunneling through the spatial structure. Other results concern the richness of spaces (or space-descriptions) and communication between users. It seems the chief benefit of the spatial metaphor of the city is in communication about spatial relationships of information. The findings probably are valuable in designing any information system using spatial metaphors. They are especially useful for hypertext systems realized in  some virtual environment -- be it a MUD or an immerse virtual reality system.