Perceived quality of multimedia educational content: A cognitive style approach

This is the post-print version of the Article. The oficial published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright, 2006 SpringerCognitive styles influence the way how humans process information, with previous research demonstrating that they have significant effects on student learning in multimedia environments. On the other hand, the perceptual quality of the human multimedia experience is notoriously difficult to measure. In this paper, we report the results of an empirical study, which investigated the relationship between user cognitive styles and perceptual multimedia quality, in which users had the possibility to specify their desired Quality of Service settings — in terms of frame rates and color depth. Results show that whilst color choice is impacted by a participant's cognitive style, such Quality of Service parameters do not significantly affect perceived multimedia quality, and that users do not necessarily choose optimum presentation settings to enhance their perceived enjoyment and assimilation of multimedia informational content

On the Impact of Lecture Recording Reduction: Evidence from a Randomised Trial

Students often use lecture recordings to learn and revise. This approach, however, demands time to locate and review relevant topics. The automatic reduction and indexing of lecture recordings, then, could focus students' attention on the most relevant content. This article investigates whether lecture recording reduction leads to improved learning outcomes on an undergraduate computer networking module. Students participated in a randomized trial which compared lightly edited full lecture recordings to those that had been significantly reduced in duration and indexed. A pre-test conducted after the initial lecture series was followed up with a post-test after several weeks of using the recordings. The results show a statistically significant difference between the groups in terms of perceived effort. However, only the students with little prior knowledge showed a statistically significant difference in learning outcome in favor of the reduced lecture recordings. Moderating factors, such as prior knowledge, warrant further research to help elicit design guidelines to inform the design and deployment of future lecture video reduction approaches

Empowering geographically isolated communities with instant access to learning and training through satellite

Enabling learning for members of geographically isolated communities such as agrarian, or maritime communities presents benefits in terms of promoting regional development and cost savings for governments and companies. We present a methodology for designing a satellite and wireless based network infrastructure and learning services to support distance learning for such isolated communities. This methodology entails (a) the involvement of community members in the development of targeted learning services from an early stage and (b) a service-oriented approach to learning solution deployment. Here this methodology is applied in the context of the European research project BASE2 (BASE2 2006), in which the following two types of geographically isolated communities are considered: agrarian and maritime

Editorial. Special issue on: Ubiquitous e-Learning Solutions over Heterogeneous Networks

This is the post-print version of the Article. The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2009 Springe

360° mulsemedia experience over next generation wireless networks - a reinforcement learning approach

The next generation of wireless networks targets aspiring key performance indicators, like very low latency, higher data rates and more capacity, paving the way for new generations of video streaming technologies, such as 360° or omnidirectional videos. One possible application that could revolutionize the streaming technology is the 360° MULtiple SEnsorial MEDIA (MULSEMEDIA) which enriches the 360° video content with other media objects like olfactory, haptic or even thermoceptic ones. However, the adoption of the 360° Mulsemedia applications might be hindered by the strict Quality of Service (QoS) requirements, like very large bandwidth and low latency for fast responsiveness to the users, inputs that could impact their Quality of Experience (QoE). To this extent, this paper introduces the new concept of 360° Mulsemedia as well as it proposes the use of Reinforcement Learning to enable QoS provisioning over the next generation wireless networks that influences the QoE of the end-users

Diagnosis of Setbacks and Intervention in Introductory Programming at Scale

It can be challenging to support and motivate programming students in introductory contexts. Although computing education in secondary schools now receives more attention, due to advocacy and revised curricula, there is still considerable variance in the programming ability of new undergraduate students. Many have little to no prior experience. As a result, university teaching staff are required to apply pedagogies that are elastic. However, elastic pedagogies, such as soft-scaffolding, are non-trivial to implement in large classes. This means that it is difficult to provide enough challenge to maintain some students’ interest while also being accessible enough to avoid intimidating others, and even more so when diagnosing student setbacks and implementing targeted interventions. To this end, the authors explore practical approaches to diagnosis and intervention in large introductory programming classes. Firstly, using robot challenges and games, such as Lego Mindstorms, SpaceChem and Blockly, as a proxy measures for computational thinking. Secondly, using psychometric instruments on SoScience to evaluate key variables such as: self-concept; mindset; and anxiety; as well as learning style. Thirdly, using Socrative to apply peer instruction methods to identify key areas of difficulty, such as assignment, as early as possible. Such data can be used to diagnose key issues and better inform teaching assistants on in-lab support, the design of peer-review activities, as well as CPD (continuing personal development) activities in small-group tutorials. While the validity and reliability of these approaches remains under investigation by the authors, initial student and staff feedback suggests the approaches are useful

Baseline Requirements for Comparative Research on Cross-Platform Mobile Development: A Literature Survey

Technical implementations are common in computing research to objectively assess hypotheses. In mobile computing, and more specifically within research on cross-platform mobile development, such implementations are usually in the form of mobile apps. Due to the lack of a common ground for research on app development, studies tend to lack depth and miss out on possible contributions. In an attempt to better the situation, we propose a technical baseline for future research on cross-platform app development to draw from based on previous studies’ technical implementations. We assess and scrutinize existing literature to find trends, and use the generated knowledge to lay out the baseline proposa

Satellite-enabled interactive education: scenarios and systems architectures

There are specific sectors of the economy that can benefit from satellite-based tele-education. Areas, such as maritime and agriculture, share common needs for both broadband connectivity at remote geographical areas that cannot otherwise be covered, and for innovative content for tele-education purposes. Furthermore, each area has special requirements with regard to the type of content to be delivered. In this paper we propose a set of architectural designs and case scenarios that will realise such interactive end-to-end education systems based on satellite communications. Services requirements in this setting are also identified and discussed

Animations in Cross-Platform Mobile Applications: An Evaluation of Tools, Metrics and Performance

Along with the proliferation of high-end and performant mobile devices, we find that the inclusion of visually animated user interfaces are commonplace, but that research on their performance is scarce. Thus, for this study, eight mobile apps have been developed for scrutiny and assessment to report on the device hardware impact and penalties caused by transitions and animations, with an emphasis on apps generated using cross-platform development frameworks. The tasks we employ for animation performance measuring, are those of (i) a complex animation consisting of multiple elements, (ii) the opening sequence of a side menu navigation pattern, and (iii) a transition animation during in-app page navigation. We employ multiple performance profiling tools, and scrutinize metrics including frames per second (FPS), CPU usage, device memory usage and GPU memory usage, all to uncover the impact caused by executing transitions and animations. We uncover important differences in device hardware utilization during animations across the different cross-platform technologies employed. Additionally, Android and iOS are found to differ greatly in terms of memory consumption, CPU usage and rendered FPS, a discrepancy that is true for both the native and cross-platform apps. The findings we report are indeed factors contributing to the complexity of app development.Animations in Cross-Platform Mobile Applications: An Evaluation of Tools, Metrics and PerformanceacceptedVersio